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Cor Mundi 

The Heart 
of the World 



ONE DOLLAR, NET 



By NICOLA GIGLIOTTI 




77 



A Contribution to the 
Mission of the 
UNITED STATES 
OFAMERICA I 

in the Modern World 



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Cor cTWundi 



The Heart of the World 



<iA Contribution to the cTWission of the 
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
In the cTWodem World 




ONE T>OLLAR, NET 



By 



NICOLA GIGLIOTTI 






COPYRIGHTED 1918 

BY 
NICOLA GIGLIOTTI 






SLP 18 i9id 

THB A-K-D PBINTINC CO. 
■ RIE. PENN'A 



To 

SAMUEL E. HOLLY, 

Editor of the Erie Evening Herald, 

Modest, Able, Conscientious, Foresighted, 

Who has seen into the future in the same spirit which has 

dictated the following pages 

and who loves this great country with the same love 

that inflames me. 

This little hook is affectionately inscribed. 



To the Reader: 

This modest contribution to American just propaganda I 
have dictated from bed. While doctors were insisting that I 
should keep absolutely quiet, because my life was and is in 
danger, I have dictated the following pages, jumpingly and 
disconnectedly, but with unity of purpose. If I shall live, my 
modest mission in life will be continued, and if God's will is 
that I must answer my summons, these pages ought to be con- 
sidered as my political testament. My children and my grand- 
children, if my memory will mean anything at all to them, 
must continue the work of loving free institutions and man- 
kind, and of doing everything in their power to keep kindled 
in theirs and in their neighbors' hearts the noble flame of 
pure patriotism. 

NICOLA GIGLIOTTL 
Erie, Pa., March 1st, 1918. 
2905 Poplar St. 



The Heart of the World 



Cor Mundi. 



The name of peace is sweet; the thing itself 
is most salutary. But bettveen peace and slavery 
there is a wide difference. Peace is liberty in 
tranquillity; slavery is the worst of all evils — to 
be repelled, if need, not only by war, but even by 
death. CICERO. 

I have been in this country for over twenty-five years, 
and I take pride in the fact that my political adversaries in 
Italy, when they did not accuse me of being a friend of France 
— one of the men who, with Cavallotti, Bovio, Imbriani, and 
others, wished to see the ruin of my motherland, in the interest 
of the great nation which proclaimed the rights of men — they 
nicknamed me the AMERICAN, on account of my love for 
the United States of America, and of my worship for Wash- 
ington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. I had lectured on the great- 
ness of republican federal governments, and I had tried to 
popularize the doctrine that peace could be enjoyed in Europe 
only when all empires, monarchies, and republics would be 
united in a federation of states. I had been very active — in 
order to check the menacing invasion of the doctrines of Karl 
Marx and of the materialistic conception of history — to give 
as much diffusion as it was possible for me to two books of 
typical American authors— PROGRESS AND POVERTY of 
Henry George, and LOOKING BACKWARD of Edward Bel- 
lamy. The last book was responsible — I am sorry to say — ^to 
help the spread of Socialism much more than all the mission- 
ary work of Andrea Costa, and all the books and pamphlets of 
Marx, Engels, Lafargue, etc. Signor Oddino Morgari, a lead- 
ing member of the Italian Parliament, after he read and re- 
read LOOKING BACKWARD, deserted the ranks of the Re- 
publicanism of Mazzini, and became one of the prophets of 
the so-called Scientific Socialist Party. It was not my fault, 
though. In Italy, in season and out of season, year in and 
year out, I advocated the principles of a republican federal 
form of government, as had been proposed by Carlo Cattaneo, 
Alberto Mario, and Giuseppe Ferrari, the eminent philosopher 
to whom we owe the magnificent edition of the works of 
Giovan Battista Vico. I worshipped Mazzini, on whose knees 
I played in my infancy in the hospitable house of Giovanni 
Nicotera in Naples. I bought and gave — as a sincere mission- 
ary of the protestant faith would have done with the Gospel 
—thousands of copies of "I DOVERI DELL'UOMO (Duties of 
Men) of Mazzini, because the doctrine advocated in them was 



6 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

and is the greatest message of freedom, virtue, unselfishness, 
and righteousness any liberty loving man could wish. From 
the French encyclopedists to our time, the majority of people 
who advocated the fall of tyrannies seemed to deny the exist- 
ence of a living God, and made an effort to banish from history 
the government of Providence. To the exaggerations of Bos- 
suet and Vico, and to the "hazard" of Voltaire and Frederick 
the Great, they substituted gradually the pantheistic fatalism 
of Hegel, the positivistic fatalism of Comte, the revolutionary 
fatalism of Thiers, and the historic materialism of Marx and 
his school. I always saw God immanent in mankind, and what 
Bancroft eloquently said in his famous speech to the Histori- 
cal Society of New York in 1856, seemed to me that every man 
should accept and try to teach. Mazzini understood the des- 
tinies of mankind better than any other man, living or gone, 
and he knew that no man was entitled to claim his rights if he 
was not ready to perform his duties. And while everybody 
else was proclaiming at the top of his voice the rights of indi- 
viduals, he wrote The Duties of Men. Even our glorious Dec- 
laration of Independence speaks too much of certain inalien- 
able rights, and says very little about imperative duties. By 
circulating widely the teachings of Mazzini, I tried to give my 
modest contribution to make men better. Every man, no mat- 
ter how modest, has a mission in life. I tried to perform mine 
to the best of my ability. I proposed the United States as a 
model of free government, because of all governments in the 
world it was and it is the only one where, in spite of all un- 
avoidable faults, people have real freedom, equal chances, and 
all the blessings of civilization. People who talk so much about 
the perfection and the freedom of Switzerland don't know the 
country, and yet write books about it, and propose it as a 
model to our nation. People who worship France as an ideal 
form of government, seem to ignore that the great Latin na- 
tion is an aristocratic republic. So that, if they called me 
American on account of my political faith, they were right. 
But they were wilful disseminators of falsehoods when they 
made me appear as a blind worshipper of France. I contend- 
ed and I contend that next to the United States England was 
and is the most liberal country in the world, so far as political 
freedom is concerned, and in spite of her immense faults. 

I have been compelled to make this statement in order 
to show that I was a logical American long before political 
and personal upheavals brought me to this country. In Europe, 
lecturing and teaching Philosophy of History, I advocated this 
doctrine. And even in a course of Comparative Literature, il- 
lustrating the works of the greatest geniuses of mankind — 
Job, Isaiah, Homer, Aeschylus, Lucretius, Dante, Shakes- 
peare, and Moliere, I paid the greatest homage it was pos- 
sible for me to America in the person of Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son. 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 7 

In the United States of America, from the moment of my 
landing to the very moment I am dictating these pages, I have 
preached, day in and day out, month in and month out, year 
in and year out, the very same doctrine, from the platform, 
from the newspapers, in my essays and poems. Of course, 
having become a naturalized citizen, I found that many of the 
natives of this country — in politics and out of politics — were 
making blunders, which would, sooner or later, hurl the 
United States into the turmoil and the uncertainties of Europ- 
ean countries. And I raised a voice of protest and warning 
meeting with ridicule, scorn and contempt. Why? Often 
people, born in other countries, see things from a more objec- 
tive standpoint, and judge with serene impartiality things 
which natives, blinded by passion, belittle or exaggerate as 
partisan motives dictate. 

They try to convince me that an American scholar has 
published the best book on Cavour ; but he has been particular- 
ly honored by the Italian government, and monarchical gov- 
ernments in general do not bestow honors on impartial his- 
torians. Truth always hurts. My warnings, inspired only by 
the unmistakable lessons of history, were not well received, 
just because they were undeniable truths. Italians were ac- 
cusing me of treachery because I was making relentless efforts 
to transform my countrymen into good Americans (and this, 
in spite of the fact that I always championed the decent sons 
of Sunny Italy, who were belittled, offensively nicknamed, per- 
secuted by men who came to better judgment only when they 
begun to realize that they needed badly their votes to remain 
in public life). Americans felt that a citizen born in a for- 
eign land had no right to give them suggestions about the 
way of conducting themselves, and their vanity, false pride, 
conceitedness and sometimes ignorance, induced them to ridi- 
cule, abuse and persecute me. But I had and I have a message 
to deliver, and I went and go ahead. People who have been busy 
writing calumnies about me, doing their level best to deprive 
me of my honest daily bread, ridiculing doctrines their limited 
knowledge and their natural pretentious asininity could not 
comprehend, paying white slavers, deserters from the army 
and German spies to besmirch me, can continue their nefar- 
ious work to their hearts' content. My self-respect, and the 
pity I have for their mental chronic coprostasis and their mor- 
al ugliness, advise me to pay no attention to them, and to go 
forward, repeating the world-famous verse of Dante : 

Non ti curar di lor, ma guarda e passa. 

George Ticknor, an American from Boston, wrote the 
best history of the Spanish Literature, and Carlo Botta, an 
Italian from Piedmont, wrote the best "History of the War of 
Independence of the United States of America." 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 



II 



I had not been in America six months ere a truth — self- 
evident and full of menace for the future — was revealed to my 
mind and filled my heart with grave concern. New York, the 
great metropolis of America, was by no means an American 
city. It was a mosaic of nationalities not blended, but abso- 
lutely distinct, separated from each other and even antago- 
nistic, kept together by selfishness, greed and resentment, if 
not contempt for the glorious country which offered them hos- 
pitality, freedom, independence from slavery and oppression, 
chance to become men, when in the countries of their birth 
they had been little better than human cattle. Poor devils 
who had no education and no human ways, were praising at 
the top of their voices the countries of their birth, saying 
everything mean of the great American commonwealth, and 
living sordidly and even shamefully to save money, in order 
to go back and live — they were saying — in the old country, 
among civilized beings. They were encouraged in their base 
ingratitude and ignorance by men of their own nationalities, 
and even by representatives of their governments, who were 
parasitically living in comfort and even in luxury at the ex- 
pense of them. Among the Italians, the Russians, the Aus- 
trians, the Germans, the French, and every other nationality, 
the private bankers, the interpreters, the publishers of news- 
papers as ignorant as their readers, but cunning and rapa- 
cious beyond measure, the brokers, the real estate sharks, the 
unscrupulous labor agents and padrones, the middlemen, who 
acted as go-between the dispensers of police, judicial and po- 
litical protection, the shysters, and even several professional 
men, had an interest to keep their unfortunate countrymen in 
ignorance and abjection, because they were harvesting large 
profits by their rascality. But I have to say something about 
it later on. For the present I shall only point out the truth 
which impressed me and followed me everywhere, as Banquo's 
spectre did Macbeth. 

Noting the large foreign population in New York and its 
disloyalty to the country, even among many of those who had 
applied for and been granted naturalization papers, I suffered 
untold agonies, because I knew that if ever the United States 
of America would be forced into war with any of the nations 
of the earth, our country would be betrayed by the very men 
who had found in America bread, dignity, protection and 
opportunity. And I raised the cry for better citizenship, for 
better education, for the spread of real understanding and 
patriotism among the children of the slums, the human brutes 
of the over-crowded foreign boarding houses, the oppressed of 
all countries, who had come here only to make money, and who 
regard the sacred soil of America as a free for all fight for af- 
fluence, no matter how obtained. I was not worrying very 
much about the spy system of foreign governments, because its 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 9 

cradle is in the foreign embassies and consular offices ; and it 
is the duty of the Secretaryship of State and of the Depart- 
ment of Justice to uncover it. There is not a government, not 
one, which has not its spy system, and the chief representa- 
tives of it are the military and naval attaches of the embas- 
sies. Their brilliant uniforms, their strong physique and 
handsome figures, their insinuating manners and methods, 
must be wisely employed to gain the esteem, the friendship, 
the admiration, the love of the wives, daughters and sisters of 
men entrusted with military, naval and state secrets. How 
many times the betrayal of a very important secret of state 
has been preceded by the ruin of a woman, by the tragedy of a 
heart, by the disruption of a family! And how many times 
the position is reversed! Aristocratic prostitutes take the 
place of the attaches and with their wiles make fools and 
traitors of men of previous unimpeachable reputation ! Money 
has been seldom the tempter of generals, admirals and states- 
men: Aspasia and Phryne often. Cherchez la femme! 

The most fantastic of all fiction could not equal in emo- 
tional, sensational, psychological, unexpected development and 
climax any of the plots carefully studied, planned and exe- 
cuted by many of those priests and priestesses of evil, called 
spies. Edgar Allen Poe could be the only historian for them. 
But I am referring to them only incidentally. My real concern 
was and is with the greatest menace to the security of the 
country, constituted by the very elements I have been talking 
about. Politicians, who wish only to be kept in office or to 
conquer it, gave and give me the laugh, because they have no 
other patriotism than that of their own pocket and power. 
And when they show so much devotion to the country, I think 
of the words of a wise editor who beautifully said that the 
patriotic effusion of the enemy is a false flag covering contra- 
band goods. Perhaps a few words about espionage will not be 
wasted in this eventful moment of our history. 

Ill 

Espionage is as old as the history of the world. A spy is 
the basest of all knaves. Whoever said that it takes a thief to 
catch a thief was practically right. Only a criminal can in- 
dulge in criminal pursuits, as it is that of spying his fellow be- 
ing in order to do him harm. Leo Tolstoy said to me, during 
a conversation I had with him in his estate of Yasniaga-Poli- 
ana nearly thirty years ago: "The spy is the meanest, lowest 
and basest animal in creation. I love everybody, no matter 
how low in the human scale. But I cannot look at a spy with- 
out experiencing the creeping sensation a clean man suffers 
at the sight of vermin." The definitions given of spies by fa- 
mous men are well known. The purest men in the world al- 
ways had a holy horror of spies. Only unscrupulous poli- 
ticians and rulers said practically that no government could 



10 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

do without the scourge. I like to pick here and there what 
some of nature's greatest noblemen had to say about spies; 
hear them : 

"Every spy has in his veins and arteries the blood of 
Judas Iscariot and lago." (Garibaldi). 

"You find all forms of criminality blended into a spy." 
(Emil Zola.) 

"Knead putrefaction and you have a spy." (Victorien 
Sardou). 

"The spy is the offspring of Cain." (Gustave Flaubert). 

"How can you avoid to execrate the ones who with ne- 
farious inclination find work for the executioner?" (Leo Tol- 
stoy). 

"Spies are the disgrace of mankind." (Gustavo Modena). 

And I could give a hundred more, all of men famous in 
the history of the world's heroism, literature, science, philoso- 
phy and art. But as the kind of spies I have reference to now 
are the secret agents of foreign offices, and as Germany has 
in this particular and nefarious endeavor excelled every 
other nation in the world, even Japan, I like to quote here 
what the foremost statesmen of modern times — Napoleon 
Bonaparte, Cavour and Bismarck — had to say of political 
spies, because their definitions are very illustrative of their 
aims, and quite a contribution to the study of the Teutonic 
and the Allies' history of activities in the present appalling 
conflagration. The great Napoleon, whose moral character 
has been depicted by Madam De Stael better than by anyone of 
his historians, wrote : "Spies? They are a political necessity." 
And his comment stopped there. Napoleon III, who was, after 
all, a modern man and sovereign, moaned: "To be a spy? A 
nefarious job." But the arch-demagogue of modern times — 
Leon Gambetta — made liberal use of spies ,and yet had the ef- 
frontery to write: "Spies — especially political spies — are a 
proof of the extreme state of baseness of those who employ 
them." With these words Gambetta wrote his death warrant 
before the tribunal of history. 

Cavour, the most wonderful and honest statesman of mod- 
ern history and one of the purest glories of civilized Italy, 
which produced the greatest of all masters of statecraft — per- 
haps the most commanding personality in the statesmanship 
of all times — Niccolo Macchiavelli (misunderstood, distorted 
and libelled by all the rag peddlers of moral pruriency, and by 
all the short-sighted and revengeful second-hand dealers in 
philosophical and theological junk) ; Cavour made the follow- 
ing statement and lived up to it to the letter: "It is better to 
meet with a reverse than to win a victory by the help of 
spies." I have mentioned the glorious name of Macchiavel- 
li, because he did more than invent the system of statecraft 
and the art of war. He predicted many of the things which 
are happening now, and taught lessons that, had they been 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 11 

learned and put into practice by the allies, the Central Em- 
pires would have been defeated long ago, and the sacred soil 
of Italy would not have been invaded by the barbarians. 
Whatever in Italy was connected with the inspiring names 
of Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour and their best lieutenants, 
was pure and noble and great and immortal. When people 
departed from the path shown by them, everything tumbled 
down. I had and I have no love for the House of Savoy, no 
more than I have for any other royal or imperial house; but 
it is only fair on my part to admit that she deserves praise and 
admiration for many worthy deeds she has performed, from 
the appearance of Humbert the Whitehand to the present 
time. With few exceptions, she has been perhaps the most 
honorable royal house in the world. The republicans of Italy 
never forgave and never will forgive the hideous crime of 
Aspromonte, where Garibaldi, after he had given a kingdom 
to Victor Immanuel II, was infamously crippled by the troops 
of the latter. It is true, however, that such an infamy would 
never have occurred had Cavour been alive. At the time 
Signor Urbano Rattazzi was prime minister of Italy, the one 
who wrote: "I greatly blame the idea of making use of the 
treacherous and loathsome work of spies, but at times they 
are, indeed, a painful necessity." What a difference between 
the clear-cut, sharp, trenchant, manly, inspiring statement of 
Cavour, and the obliquitous, hypocritical and cowardly dec- 
laration of Rattazzi! But to ask honor of Rattazzi is as to 
ask honey of a rattlesnake. He was the husband of the no- 
torious Madame Rattazzi, whose exploits are still green in the 
memory of us all. 

Bismarck was more explicit, but more brutally hypocrit- 
ical than Rattazzi. It is true, however, that Moltke, the Deus 
ex machina of the Franco-Prussian war, had frankly defined 
the trend of Germany, when he stated: "In life we are in- 
deed compelled to walk in mud." Bismarck wrote: "/ have 
nothing but contempt for spies, but I make liberal use of 
them because they are indispensable to me. Nevertheless, I 
mistrust very much women spies, because they can be easily 
bought by the enemy." And yet, in spite of his dislike for 
secret service women, Bismarck made large use of them. 

Tartuffe of Moliere is for me the prototype of all spies. 
And because the foremost German spy resembles Tartuffe so 
much, a little sketch of him is not out of place, especially if 
you take into consideration that he was the genius and the 
founder of the modern spy system. Stieber was his name, 
and Bismarck proclaimed him the king of spies. A man of 
great talent, education and nerve, exactly as Tartuffe by Or- 
gon, Stieber, in 1847, was befriended and given a home by 
an industrial of Silesia, who took him into his house, gave 
him the management of his business, introduced him to his 
friends and associates, and did not dislike the discovery that 



12 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

he had inflamed with love the heart of his niece. Stieber, 
affecting a noble heart, a great love for justice and freedom, 
and a deep concern for the welfare of the people, posing as a 
social democrat, preached to all he could reach the doctrine 
of the rights of man, and found many who had the same 
principles and many more he converted. But in 1848, after 
the famous revolutionary outbreaks which seemed to have 
in Paris their storm center, the factory of the benefactor of 
Stieber and the shops of his friends were filled with liberal 
ferment, and became the houses of refuge for many of the 
political refugees. The Prussian government suddenly falls 
upon the factories, imprisons the owners, and arrests men 
galore. Exiles, stiff sentences, capital punishments follow. 
Tartuffe, in the comedy by Moliere, when discovered, ends as 
men of his kind richly deserve. But Stieber elopes with his 
benefactor's niece — who discovers too late that the man was 
a spy — and goes to Berlin, where King Friedrich Wilhelm 
gratefully greets him, appoints him chief of police of the 
kingdom, gives him extraordinary powers, and requests him 
to spy the very members of the royal family. Kings have al- 
ways been more or less suspicious of their families. The 
Prussian ruler did what other sovereigns did and do. Have 
you not perused the confessions of Nicholas Romanoff, former 
czar of Russia? 

A few years after, Bismarck becomes the molder of the 
destinies of Prussia, and of the future of the German em- 
pire. Stieber becomes the chief instrument for Bismarck's 
plotting, and his system reaches the highest peak of man- 
agement, organization and efficiency. Stieber had submit- 
ted to the king a project for the reorganization of secret serv- 
ice, and encouraged and empowered to go forward and stop 
at nothing, he had become acquainted with the secrets of 
everybody, princes, ambassadors, generals, members of the 
cabinet, politicians, courtiers, ladies of high rank, people of 
influence in every walk of life. He sees everything. He dis- 
guises himself as army and navy officer, pastor, confessor, 
butler, man under the influence of liquor, peasant, simpleton, 
in order to uncover society, family, workingmen's secrets. 
Bismarck unfolds to him his plan. He is going to build a 
German empire headed by Prussia. In order to see the tri- 
umph of Teutonic hegemony, which was the dream and goal 
of his life, it was indispensable to crush France; but such 
task could not be accomplished unless Austria would be put 
out of the way. Stieber understands, and goes to Bohemia, 
where he prepares the ground for the safe passage of the 
Prussian army. Wonderful is his sagacity, and his plan is 
highly successful. Prussia wins. Austria is humiliated. At 
his return to Berlin, Stieber is received as a national hero. 
The king, who had already conferred on him the cross of the 
red eagle, showers new honors upon him. The provinces of 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 13 

Alsace and Lorrain are needed. He is asked to organize the 
espionage in France, which has to pave the road to a Prus- 
sian victory. Before he is ready to undertake the gigantic 
task, Stieber asks full powers and one million and five hun- 
dred thousand marks in cold cash, which are given him with- 
out hesitation. He goes to Paris, recruiting eighteen hundred 
spies, instructing and directing them with the utmost care, 
sending them in every department of France, and directing 
them to report to intelligence centers established in the cities 
of Geneva, Lausanne, Berlin and Brussels. From Paris he 
requested the government at Berlin to furnish him with five 
thousand farmers and gardeners, nine thousand girls to em- 
ploy as waitresses and maids in cafes, restaurants and hotels ; 
seven hundred officers on leave of absence to be employed in 
French government offices, four hundred beautiful and gay 
Prussian girls to be placed in Parisian wine houses, and four 
hundred accomplished and nice young ladies to be govern- 
esses and maids in the best homes in the capital of France. 
The strategy of Moltke and the master political mind of Bis- 
marck could not have taken Napoleon prisoner at Sedan, dic- 
tated the peace of Versailles, and consolidated the German 
empire without Stieber, the spy. 

The success of Stieber induced the German government 
to continue and improve the spy system. In spite of the con- 
fession of Bismarck that he mistrusted spies in petticoats, for 
certain information they relied and rely chiefly on women. Ger- 
man women, with many accomplishments, were sent to Eng- 
land, Russia, Italy, France, America, whenever they needed to 
spread their nets for future operations. Those women often 
write poetry, compose music, speak several languages, con- 
tract marriages with great facility, and bigamy seems to be a 
pastime for them, use philanthropy as a decoy, art as a pro- 
curer, smooth calumny as the most efficient weapon to dis- 
credit those who know them and are in a position to set the 
minds of people thinking. You often find them married to 
men handsome, smooth, accomplished, and much younger than 
themselves, who have the mind of foxes, the heart of tigers, 
the voracity of wolves, the greediness of misers, the man- 
ners of college boys. Their chief task is to seduce and enslave 
to them women of public officials in a position to give valuable 
information ; but there is no infamy which would deter them. 
The more nefarious the job, the better they like it. Many of 
the women in the employment of the German spy system had 
to become the mistresses of men in power, in order to win 
their confidence and steal state secrets, the wives of men of 
the nationalities mentioned for the purpose of performing 
their nefarious tasks with more freedom and arousing less 
suspicion, to be the secretaries and confidantes of the ladies 
of army officers, cabinet members, diplomats, employees of 
state, navy and general staff departments. People who be- 



14 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

lieve, for instance, that German spies in America are ex- 
clusively German are greatly mistaken. Some of the worst 
German spies are men from allied countries, and even Ameri- 
cans, native born Americans of pure Anglo-Saxon descent. 
Do I say men alone? No! Women, as well, and many of 
them; and men and women, conspicuous in society, in poli- 
tics, in industrial, educational, philanthropic and religious en- 
deavor. What Stieber did in France is done every day in 
America, under the very eyes and many times with the com- 
placency of municipal, county, state and national authorities. 

I know of real patriots — pure, unselfish, capable, incor- 
ruptible citizens — who think and perform what there is of 
nobler in the life of man and of higher in the history of the 
world, set aside as stumbling-stones in a footpath, if not 
pitied as fools or spurned as imposters ; and of smooth, insin- 
uating, honey-tongued and candid-looking rascals, who, under 
the mask of patriotism, hid the blackest plans of treachery, 
pushed forward, acclaimed as models of virtue, trusted with 
delicate positions in the service of the country. Pan-German- 
ism has attracted in its orbit prejudice, ignorance, greed, ras- 
cality, rapacity, and has made capital of that natural tend- 
ency of the rabble, which pays attention to gossip and cal- 
umny and ignores praise and virtue, is jealous of happiness 
in others and enjoys their misfortunes. A certain famous re- 
ligious sect which became celebrated in history, more for po- 
litical intrigue and power than for piety, admonished, refer- 
ring to the most important harm to be done to their enemies : 
"Calomniez, calomniez; il en reste toujours quelque chose." 

People who are shocked by German methods, and are in- 
dignant only after the awful crimes of the last three years, 
and after a chancellor called treaties "scraps of paper," are 
justifiable, because they knew nothing of Teutonic intrigue and 
perversity. But statesmen, politicians, and scholars, who in 
their posthumous resipiscence, raise their voice of bitter re- 
monstrance, must be congratulated only on account of their 
conversion and repentance. When they were in a position to 
avoid the conflagration, or to prepare for future emergencies, 
they fornicated with Germany. State departments for years 
and years have been aware of what was going on. We deal 
with recent events. The times of the war for the independence 
of America have nothing to do with the present conflict. Ger- 
mans who came during that time to America had the right 
spirit, made admirable citizens, and their progeny are worthy 
citizens of the United States of America. General Muhlen- 
berg? Why, he was born and raised in Pennsylvania. Hein- 
rich Melchoir Muhlenberg, his father, was born at Finbeck, 
Prussia, one year before the birth of Frederick the Great, by 
whom he was preceded by one year to the grave. Educated 
for the Lutheran ministry, being a man of pure mind, heart 
and body, he was disgusted with the injustices and the un- 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 15 

godly tendencies of the Prussian government and emigrated 
young to the United States, settling at Trappe, Pa., where his 
son, the celebrated American Revolutionary general and politi- 
cian, John Peter Gabriel, was born in 1746. Henry Melchoir 
was founder of the Lutheran Church in the United States 
but his descendents, who became all very distinguished citi- 
zens, were Episcopalians, and it is worth while to mention 
Henry Augustus Muhlenberg, preacher and politician, who 
was mmister of the United States to Austria from 1838 to 
1840, and William Augustus Muhlenberg, pastor of St. Luke, 
m New York, and a famous hymnologist. Who among the 
Protestant worshippers is not familiar with his hvmn "I 
Would not Live Alway" ? 

Mr. Roosevelt— to mention no others— in the times poli- 
ticians were praising the Kaiser to the skies— forgot that the 
supreme rule of Prussia's political morals was set by Freder- 
ick the Great when he wrote : "If it will be profitable to us to 
be honest, honest we will be; but should crookedness be nec- 
essary, crooks shall we be." It is, after all, the creed of all 
governments, which are very far from practicing the splendid 
rule^set by Montesquieu in his much discussed "L'Esprit des 
Lois" : "Honor shall be the rule of monarchies, justice of re- 
publics, fear of despotic governments." The spy system as 
even the blindest of the blind can see, is the very negation of 
honor and justice. 

IV. 

Of course, all history shows that there is not a single 
people, no matter how glorious or unfortunate, that has not 
been guilty of the very same crimes which they reproach in 
others. Homo hominis lupus. They suffer from others what 
they made others suflfer from them. Modern history differs 
Irom ancient only in ways and means ; the aims are the same. 
1 he legendary homeric trap of the Greeks to the Trojans has 
nothing for envy to Stieber's spies or to Austrian and German 
soldiers invading Italy in Italian uniforms, and preaching the 
gospel of brotherhood with lips, and keeping the stilleto of the 
assassin hidden m the treacherous sleeve and ready to mur- 
der mercilessly. Many of the people, who are so much shock- 
ed by German cruelties, have done the same thing in a dif- 
ferent, but not less reproachable way. The soldiers sent to 
Uiina to repress the Boxers practised outrages that make us 
shudder with horror. Officers oppressed, tortured, murdered 
^^^^ J^^hinamen, in order to rob them of their treasures. Many 
who had gone there poor, came back rich. The trial of an 
Italian officer— Modugno— cannot be forgotten. Was our 
great country always free of blame? In order to rob the 
Indians, did not the citizens of this country follow to the let- 
ter many of the methods we curse in the Germans? Did 
I^ngland not use the greatest of all callings— the ministry of 



16 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

religion — to expropriate savages of their holdings? I can- 
not read, without a sense of deep emotion, the magnificent 
speech delivered by Red Jacket, chief of the Senecas, in the 
summer of 1805, after the Rev. Mr. Cram had outlined to the 
six nations the work he intended to do among them. The 
words of Red Jacket sound as a warning to all mankind, to 
all Christianity, rather, who seem to have forgotten the im- 
mortal teachings of the Master: "Ye shall know them by 
their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of this- 
tles?" "Brother," said Red Jacket, "we are told that you 
have been preaching to the white people in this place. These 
people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. 
We will wait a little to see what effect your preaching has 
upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest 
and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will consider again of 
what you have said." 

We are right in being indignant for what has been done 
to the poor people of Belgium. But did the Belgians treat 
any better the poor devils of the Congo? We curse with sin- 
cerity and justice the wrongs done Serbia. But how can 
we forget the history of intrigues, crimes and bloodshed of 
that unfortunate country's government? In the times of 
the scandals of King Milan and Queen Natalie the writer of 
these pages went to Belgrade to gather information and write 
letters for newspapers. We pity Poland, the Niobe of na- 
tions, and I must confess that I have a particularly soft spot 
in my heart for a country for the independence of which my 
family's blood was shed. And yet history, which is an unde- 
niable testimonial, shows that when Poland was powerful 
she did everything to oppress, dismember, ruin Russia. The 
glorious name of Kosma Minin, the poor butcher of Nijni 
Novgorod, cannot be cancelled from our minds. On Palm 
Sunday of 1611, one of the bloodiest days in the history of 
Russia and of mankind. King Sigismond and his Polish sol- 
diers, not satisfied with the most atrocious tyrannies and 
spoliations with which they were oppressing the enslaved 
neighbors, butchered unmercifully the people of Moscow. 
The massacre of St. Bartholomew, led in France by the Duke 
of Guise, Catherine de Medici, and Charles II, was not more 
atrocious. The French Catholics, in order to celebrate the 
wedding of Henry of Navarre, butchered thousands upon 
thousands of Huguenots, guilty only of believing in the Gos- 
pel, and noted for the purity of their lives. The Polish op- 
pressors of Russia massacred thousands upon thousands of 
inhabitants of Moscow only for the pleasure of making flow 
rivers of innocent blood. But from the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew sprung a religious war vividly registered in the 
pages of history, and came to America that Huguenot seed 
which still has in itself the power of regenerating this country 
of promise; and from the Moscow butchery came the revolt 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 17 

against the Polish oppressor led by Kosma Minin, the butcher, 
and by Pogiarski, the soldier; and from the revolution was 
born the dynasty of the Romanoffs, which ended so pitifully 
and ignominiously in the recent Russian upheaval, which, on 
account of the vanity, the inefficiency and the cowardice of the 
supreme demagogue, Kerensky, has been so sterile in results 
and so rich in new misfortunes. I wish to say, in order to 
invite the reflection of the reader, that the adverse fate of the 
Romanoffs was sealed since the second ruler of that dynasty, 
Alexis, created that execrable tribunal of state inquisition, 
the Secret Chancery, in the name of which the foremost citi- 
zens could be arrested, jailed, tortured, deprived of life, 
through the accusations or even insinuations of the most un- 
reliable wretches in the country. Institutions of the kind 
are always pernicious. They are the cornerstone of that evil 
building of degradation, depravity, and disintegration, which 
sooner or later, will ring the fatal knell of agony and death 
of a nation. Through institutions of the kind human society 
becomes the prey of that most abominable of taints — hypoc- 
risy and duplicity — which slowly but fatally rot the very 
nature of the nation, and carries it to dissolution and ruin. 
The law which God made to individuals applies to nations. 
Death is the salary of sin. Many of the present sufferings, 
uncertainties, deprivations of the Russian people are to be 
traced to the very cause I have referred to. 

And what I say of Russia is true of every other people, 
ancient or modern: the East, the West, Nineveh, Babylon, 
Egypt, Israel, Greece, Persia, Rome, Europe, America. Sus- 
picion and the execrable spy system made of people created by 
God in His likeness nothing but human vermin. La Roche- 
foucauld says that hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to 
virtue. No. For mercy's sake, no! Hypocrisy is the ruina- 
tion of individuals and of nations. Germany will be punish- 
ed. No matter how loud her cry : "Gott strafe England ! Gott 
strafe Italien! Gott strafe Amerika!" The punishment will 
fatally descend on the Kaiser and his allies. The spy system 
alone is enough to shake Germany from her very foundations. 
But other nations should take care! When I referred to 
Italy and Cavour, I did it for a purpose. I wished to illus- 
trate the truth of my contention. Rome had her great faults. 
She did an immense amount of good to every nation she con- 
quered, but she oppressed and spoliated, too; and she had 
to suffer for it. But the good she had done made her spirit 
survive and be a blessing to mankind. Middle ages gave Italy 
glories, and sufferings, and divisions, and oppressions, and 
tyrannies of all kinds; made of her sacred soil the coveting 
and battle ground of all tyrants and the bloody platform of 
her internecine enmities, discords and fratricide wars. But 
her spirit survived. In the darkest moment of her hopes, 
Macchiavelli sent to the centuries to come his prophetic word 



18 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

of unity, independence and freedom. Misfortunes accumu- 
lated, but the voice did not die, the spirit lived and worked. 
Germans, French, Spaniards, Austrians alternated their ne- 
farious work of oppression. Theocratic tyrants widened her 
wounds in the name of a Redeemer, whose very words had 
been of brotherhood, freedom and justice. But her spirit 
kept her spiritually alive. When Vincenzo Gioberti publish- 
ed his immortal book, which has been unjustly forgotten — 
Del Progresso Morale e Civile Degli Italiani — on the Civil 
and Moral Progress of the Italians — the spirit worked won- 
derfully. And it was the very same spirit which brought to 
the world a new, magnificent message of civilization, when 
Cesare Beccaria, in his immortal little book "On Crimes and 
Punishments," directed the blind and ferocious distributors 
of law : "Do not kill." It is true that they will kill yet, even 
in America. May God inspire some of the readers, if they 
happen to be legislators or judges, to search their consciences 
and repent for the crimes they have committed in keeping 
in the penal code the capital punishment or in condemning 
criminals to death. 

The very same spirit inspired Cavour to reach the goal, 
when he proclaimed: "L'ltalia fara' da se." Italy has offered 
to mankind a phenomenon unique in history. All -ancient na- 
tions had disappeared completely. Israel? Only a brilliant 
souvenir, an immortal testimonial in the most wonderful crea- 
tion of genius, the Bible. Greece? Only a necropolis. Her 
geniuses had shone thousands of years ago in the firmament 
of her glory ; and shine now only to the students of past ages, 
to the scholars, the philosophers, the artists, who drink in the 
immortal fountain of their beauty ! But Italy ! Always alive. 
She lives in the glories of her past and in the magnificence of 
her present. The Roman Forum is gone. But the temple 
of Minerva is still there, transformed into the Pantheon, 
where the remains of the kings of the third Italy rest. And 
St. Peter, the temple of mankind, as with the inspiration of 
genius calls it Lamartine in Graziella, is there and will remain 
there for the admiration of the centuries. Virgil is succeeded 
by Dante, Cincinnatus by Garibaldi, Cato and Cicero by Maz- 
zini. Macchiavelli comments the celebrated Roman historian, 
and writes "Essays on Livy and Government," which are one 
of the greatest contributions to the science and art of real 
statecraft in the world. And comes Cavour. Beccaria had 
reaffirmed Italy's belief in humanity; Cavour states in the 
most emphatic way possible that without honor and justice 
there cannot be a government worthy of men's dignity and 
of the favorable judgment of history. His words about spies 
are the most inspiring lesson to diplomacy founded on duplic- 
ity, and to governments which repose on the infamous theory 
of Frederick the Great. Cavour states the aims of Italian 
history and emphasizes the meaning of Italian spirit. Know- 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 19 

ing that the rights of nationality and the independence and 
freedom of peoples of the same race and language and aspira- 
tions are the fundaments of international peace, and that 
they cannot be secured unless diplomacy is shorn of her se- 
crecy, he squarely sets before nations the lesson dictated by 
the much-abused Macchiavelli in the following sentences, 
which are taken from the History of Florence : 

"Whoever has no hopes of good, will not be afraid of evil." 

"Every chain is a great weight and every alliance a con- 
straint to the man accustomed to living free." 

"Who is afraid of every man never will be able to trust 
anybody." 

It is necessary to add, now that I have again said great 
things of Cavour and Macchiavelli, a few lines, in order to 
show that, in spite of the perversity of the Italian rabble, 
which is no better and no worse than all mobs (did not the 
Florentine Secretary admonish us that "to take pleasure in 
evil is the nature of the multitude"?), the Italian armies are 
the most civilized and humane in Europe. Arson, pillage, mas- 
sacre are unknown to them. Why? Italy for centuries has 
been visited, devastated, subject to the most unbelievable in- 
dignities by foreign oppressors and assassins in soldiers' garb. 
Of all foreign soldiers the very worst had always been the 
Huns, the Germans and the Austrians, real bands of robbers, 
human tigers, who took and take delight only in rape, mur- 
der, and extermination. Even the tradition of Wallenstein, 
who brought to Lombardy desolation and pestilence, is still 
vivid in the minds of the peasants. The tyrants and the popes, 
in order to preserve their power, surrounded themselves with 
mercenary troops, which were a subject of general execra- 
tion. Mercenaries from Switzerland are still a decorative 
souvenir of times not distant in the Vatican. The only foreign 
armies which left no ill feeling were the soldiers of the first 
Napoleon, who, tyrant as he was, did good to all people con- 
quered. The French army which fought for Italian freedom 
against Austria was and is blessed; and had the French left 
Italy and the pope alone, certain lamentable misunderstand- 
ings and recriminations between the two generous Latin 
countries, would never have occurred. The Teuton soldiers of 
today are no different from the mercenary bandits of yore. 
The proclamations of their commanders which have been 
published show it. When a nation allows to be shouted at 
peoples, whose territories have been invaded, the outrageous 
words the Austrians and the Germans have been shouting at 
the Italian soldiers, men in this country, who feel not ashamed 
of coming from German or Austrian parentage, show an ab- 
solute absence of moral sense, and deserve pity and contempt ! 

In Belgium, Poland, Serbia, Roumania, France, in the 
strip of invaded Italy, they have amply proved they are al- 
ways the nefarious soldiers of Attila. Their aerial and sub- 



20 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

marine atrocities have shown the world that they are even 
worse than their ancestors. Nature does not change: Natur- 
am expellas furca tamen usque recurrit. And yet, in spite of 
all protests and demands for reprisals, the order issued by 
the commanders to the soldiers of Italy has been and is : "Vic- 
tory at all costs, but without treachery, and, above all, with 
mercy and humanity to the defeated." Why? Because Italy 
has been oppressed and lacerated, she hates even the idea of 
oppressing and lacerating other people. Because she knows 
by sad experience what arson, pillage, rape, massacre, are, 
she spurns the very idea of making use of them in retaliating. 
Because the leading minorities have been and are the soul of 
honor and justice, the genuine custodians of the spirit I had 
reference to, she went to war against the wishes of the king, 
against the machinations of the courtiers who were the 
friends and admirers of Germany, against the exhortations of 
the corrupt politicians who have been morally convicted of 
fornication with the enemies of civilization and progress, 
against the exhortations of the false friends from abroad and 
the prophets of evil from within. I have branded Gambetta, 
the French politician, as the worst demagogue of modern 
times. But I must brand as particularly dishonest Italian 
modern parliamentary politics, which started to deteriorate 
after Premier Agostino Depretis, dead long since, put into 
practice a shameful system of corrupting influences, which was 
defined "transformism," and could have been called more 
properly "prostitution." But the system of corruption and 
baseness inaugurated by Signor Giovanni Giolitti — the for- 
mer premier and despot of the Italian parliament — has no 
parallel in the history of Italian politics. A quarter of a 
century ago, after the bankruptcy of the Roman Bank, Signor 
Giolitti was compelled to relinquish the premiership, in dis- 
grace and under censure. In England and somewhere else, 
he would have been unable to regain prestige and power. Big- 
ger men were retired from public life for much less. A man 
of very modest education, of unsignificant past, of little elo- 
quence, but a master of intrigue, of unscrupulousness and of 
cunning, he became premier again; and the very people who 
had denounced him in pamphlets as the reincarnation of the 
worst banditism (I refer principally to Signor Filippo Turati, 
the leader of the "Official Socialists" in the Italian Parlia- 
ment, the author of a publication in which he made a compar- 
ison between Giolitti and Tiburzi, the bandit, with the results 
favoring Tiburzi, and a man of unusual education and of 
great mental attainments, who became, later on, one of the 
most willing tools in the hands of the fox of Dronero), were 
and are his most enthusiastic supporters! Everybody knows 
the intimate friendship between Prince Von Bulow and Sig- 
nor Giolitti, who has been always very friendly to Germany 
and Austria; and everybody knows the relations of cordial 



Gigliotti — Co7' Mundi 21 

comradeship existing between the former premier and the 
Socialists named! 

These Socialists have been playing all the time into the 
hands of the Teutonic social-democrats; and have been, with 
the Vatican, very busy in preaching peace at any cost. Gen- 
eral Luigi Cadorna has been a victim of circumstances. To 
blame him for the disaster of last fall is unjust. But the ma- 
jority of the Italian patriots, who have always looked upon 
the pope with suspicion, because the Catholic Hierarchy has 
always been particularly friendly to the Teutons — the Austri- 
ans above all — have grown suspicious of General Cadorna 
just because he is so extremely religious and Catholic that he 
hears Mass every day, and goes often to confession and com- 
munion. Things of this sort must be known in America. No 
serene appreciation of recent events is possible without the 
exact knowledge of conditions as they really are. It has been 
stated that the Italian court was friendly to Germany. A 
few months before Italy was compelled to go to war on the 
side of the allies. King Victor Immanuel III, advised by the 
false prophets of his cabinet and his entourage, and following 
his own inclination, sent the following telegram to the late 
Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria : "Faithful to my alliances, 
I maintain a benevolent neutrality." History is no fiction, 
and facts remain "facts" in their cold eloquence. 

Governments do not always represent the country. Italy 
— the real Italy, brimming with the spirit and traditions 
mentioned — could not forget all the sufferings Germany and 
Austria had caused to her ; she knew her just vindications had 
not been fulfilled yet; she heard the voice arising from the 
graves of the martyrs and of the heroes of the noblest of all 
causes. The voice of Garibaldi was still thundering the very 
same words he delivered in Naples, September 10, 1860 : "To 
this wonderful page in our country's history another more 
glorious, still will be added, and the slave shall show at last 
to his free brothers a sharpened sword forged from the links 
of his fetters. To arms, then, all of you, all of you. And the 
oppressors and the mighty shall disappear like dust. * * 
We shall meet again before long to march together to the re- 
demption of our brothers who are still slaves of the stranger. 
We shall meet again before long to march to new triumphs." 
(Garibaldi to his soldiers, London Times, Sept., 1860). Maz- 
zini, who died a prisoner in his own country, March 10, 1872, 
is still thundering to the Italians the prophetic words he de- 
livered July 25, 1848, at Milan : "You are endowed with ac- 
tive and splendid faculties, with a tradition of glory which is 
the envy of all nations. An immense future is before you. 
Your eyes are raised to the loveliest heaven and around you 
smiles the loveliest land in Europe. You are encircled by 
the Alps and the sea, boundaries marked out by the fingers 
of God for a people of giants. And you must be such or noth- 



22 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

ing. Let not a look be raised to heaven which is not that of a 
free man. Love humanity. You can only ascertain your own 
mission from the aim placed by God before humanity at large. 
Beyond the Alps, beyond the sea, are other peoples, now fight- 
ing, or preparing to fight, the holy fight of independence, of 
nationality, of liberty; other peoples striving by different 
routes to reach the same goal. Unite with them and they will 
unite with you." 

Such are the ideals of the men whose souls have been 
visited by the spirit of Latin civilization. Such are the ideals 
of the men who know that no peace can come to the world 
before the fight of independence, of nationality, of liberty is 
won, before all the oppressors and mighty have disappeared 
like dust. Kings and emperors have to go. The triumph of 
democracy alone can save civilization and give permanent 
peace to the world. President Wilson is right in everything, 
except in his views about Austria; and his mistake comes 
from what I humbly consider a wrong conception of his- 
tory. No matter how religious, the President of the United 
States gives history a materialistic conception, basing the in- 
terpretation of facts almost exclusively on conditions and mo- 
tives of an economic nature. He belongs to the utilitarian 
school ; and I say this without disrespect, but only in the spirit 
of serene impartiality, which informs these modest pages. My 
impression is derived from the conscientious study of his his- 
tory of the American people. Some of the acts of Mr. Wilson, 
which make indignant Mr. Roosevelt, are only the logical con- 
sequence of his honest interpretation of history. 

England is generously paying a very high price for the 
blunders of her mediocre statesmen, who unconsciously — 
through narrow-mindedness and selfishness — planted the 
seeds of the present conflagration in 1859. Kossuth is dead. 
But his work is alive. Edmondo De Amicis, Achille Majoc- 
chi, and myself went to see him in his home at Turin, Italy, 
a little time before he passed away. Dr. Timoteo Riboli came 
a little after to inquire about the health of the great Hun- 
garian patriot, who was a follower of Mazzini and Garibaldi, 
and who became an Italian, after Hungary had become an 
integral part of the dual monarchy headed by the emperor of 
Austria. We were speaking of the conception of the United 
States of Europe. The grand old man said: "A federal re- 
publican form of government for all Europe? A magnificent 
vision. But England ruined everything. On account of her 
blunder (it seems to me he said, crime), before justice will 
prevail in Europe, rivers of blood shall flow. Germany and 
Austria — cursed Austria, the country of oppression, the cradle 
of infamy and crime — will shock the world with their atro- 
cities." 

Kossuth was right. He had tried to avoid the massacre 
long since. He had warned England more than half a century 
before the conflagration set Europe and the world afire. 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 23 

England has always been the cradle of political freedom. 
To deny it would be ignorance or bad faith. But freedom has 
been more the result of the will of the people than of the gen- 
erosity of governments. In no other nation is public opinion 
as powerful as in England. From the death of King Charles 
I on the scaffold, British governments and rulers have been 
more careful than they used to be. Liberal governments m 
England have been near the people, and have done much good. 
Conservative governments, on the other hand, have often 
been wrong to their country and to foreign nations, when 
they have not stupidly played into the hands of Germany, as 
has been the case in years not very far from us. Reason 
has been the dominant trait of the former ; selfishness of the 
latter. 

Lord Palmerston, liberal, had seen clearly the future, 
and had encouraged the sentiments which prompted the re- 
volts of 1848. He wished sincerely the freedom of Italy and 
Hungary. The letters of Gladstone from Naples are an his- 
torical document of the highest importance. But the liberal 
government of Lord Palmerston was in 1858-59 supplanted 
by that of the conservatives and Lord Derby, who remained 
enough in power to do immense harm. The first seed of the 
present conflagration was sown by Lord Derby in 1859. Other 
British premiers and foreign secretaries unconsciously con- 
tinued the work, helping Germany in many of her schemes, 
and giving her Helgoland. The best history can say of them, 
is contained in a popular saying: "The snake did bite the 
fakir." 

Piedmont, under the leadership of the immortal Cavour, 
had started, with the help of France and Napoleon III, the 
war of national independence, winning one victory after 
another against Austria. Italian and French armies were 
pushing the discomflted Austrians into Venice. The crum- 
bling of Austria seemed very near. All Italy was rejoicing. 
Kossuth and his friends were happy, because they knew that 
an Austrian disaster would open the door to Hungarian 
emancipation. The oppressed Polish saw the hope of free- 
dom in bloom. The people of England were heart and soul 
with the Sardinians. But the government of England, pre- 
sided by that sinister friend of tyrants — Lord Derby — took the 
side of Austria. Praise and gratitude to the generous people 
of England, who atoned so magnificently for the sin of the 
government by encouraging Garibaldi, by sending the flower 
of their youth to fight and die in the glorious cause of Italian 
independence! Eternal shame to a cabinet which helped op- 
pressors and made possible the horrors of later years! The 
cabinet of St. James intimated that unless the French and 
the Italian advance would come to a halt, England should in- 
terfere in favor of Austria. The British people were indig- 
nant and protested. An indignation mass meeting, presided 



24 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

by the Lord Mayor, was held in the London Tavern, May 20th, 
1859 ; and Louis Kossuth delivered his most impassioned 
speech, which cannot be read today without a sense of deep 
emotion, closing his magnificent outburst of heartfelt elo- 
quence with the following imploration : "I love my fatherland 
more than myself; more than anything on earth. And in- 
spired by this love, I ask one boon — only one boon — from 
England, and that is that she should not support Austria. 
England has not interfered for liberty ; let her not interfere 
for the worst of despotisms — that of Austria." 

Ways and conditions and times have changed; but the 
cause is the same. Had the British government been more 
enlightened and less selfish, Europe would have had peace 
from that time. With the elimination of Austria, the vindi- 
cation of the principle of nationality and a better asset of 
Europe, Prussia would have been compelled to become more 
modern and democratic, the Prussian-Austrian and the 
Franco-Prussian wars would have been avoided, Spain would 
have been able to maintain the Republic she had formed (as 
Signor Emilio Castelar stated to me in an interview I had 
with him in Madrid), Russia would have been pushed toward 
salutary and substantial reforms, the Balkan volcano would 
have been impossible, and — this is an idea of my own — Great 
Britain would have granted the requests of the Irish patriots 
long ago, and probably she would have avoided misunder- 
standings with the United States of America, keeping away 
from her activities in the Civil War. 

V. 

Peace? Is peace a thing of this world? As Prussia is 
the chief disturber, it is advisable to ask the opinion of the 
holiest man in Germany, the philosopher, who redeems in a 
way the whole country — Immanuel Kant, of Koenigsberg. 
His book "Ziim Eivigen Frieden," or philosophical essay, as 
he used to call it, should be consulted, studied, circulated by 
every lover of truth and fair play. It was in 1795. Kant was 
seventy-one years old, and he became famous all over the 
world for his "Critique of Pure Reason." A firm believer in 
justice and fair play, he was deeply disgusted with the violent 
invasion of Silesia by Frederick the Great, the triple parti- 
tion of Poland, the invasion of France in 1792, and all the in- 
famous aggressions, injustices, violations of every law of hu- 
manity he had witnessed during his life. Stopping at one time 
at a cabaret in Holland, he was struck by its strange sign : 
there was painted a cemetery, and under it the words "Zum 
ewigen Frieden," ("for perpetual peace"). He gave this pes- 
simistic title to the book of the closing of his life — he died 
in 1804 — which was humanitarian to the highest degree. Kant 
was an extreme partisan of peace at any cost. In this essay 
you hear the voice of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount : "And 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 25 

if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, 
let him have thy cloak also." You notice in it the seed which 
will develop into the doctrine of non-resistance of Tolstoy. 
But you learn from it also a supreme lesson. He tells you 
that the only government to secure peace is the republican. 
War seemed to Kant the manifestation of savage life, be- 
cause it represents anarchy between nations, survived to an- 
archy between individuals, who, attracted by reciprocal in- 
terests, had agreed to unite and obey the same laws. Now, 
how can we look with contempt upon the savages, who live 
without restraint, always ready to jump on their neighbors 
and massacre them, always submitting human nature to the 
laws of mere animality, when we have plunged into a state 
of continuous unrest, which perpetuates among nations the 
anarchy which dishonored the individuals? When war be- 
comes an impellent necessity it must have its customs: it 
must exclude treachery and acts of savagery, which would de- 
stroy mutual respect between belligerents. Every war im- 
plies that the enemy of today may become the friend and 
the ally of tomorrow and, naturally, it must never plan the 
suppression of a nation, which is not a more or less large ex- 
tent of territory, but an association of men, speaking the 
same language, and enjoying inalienable rights. 

Kant's idea about republics being the most adaptable 
form of governments to maintain peace is right, because jus- 
tice is the rule of republics, and where justice rules, wars, 
which are the offspring of injustice, cannot find favor. But 
they must be real republics, something similar to the "Ideal 
City" of Plato. 

Tolstoy took much from Kant's essay, as has been inti- 
mated above. But from what has been rapidly condensed, it 
is self-evident that there is a deep, irreconsilible difference 
between the doctrines of the philosopher of Koenigsbrg and 
the nobleman turned peasant of Russia. 

The aberrations of the Russian people are the inevitable 
result of centuries of serfdom and sufferings. The system in- 
augurated by Alexis Romanoff could not help but make the 
people suspicious of their own government as much, if not 
more, than foreign governments. Always slaves, the change 
of government — whether domestic or imported — meant only 
change of master. Among the enlightened, who felt repul- 
sion for autocracy, the idea of a peaceful, orderly form of de- 
mocracy could not penetrate. Lvoff and Miliukoff, who were 
the only ones who could have saved Russia, are tramp stars 
in an immense firmament. The tendencies were revolution- 
ary Socialism, of the pattern represented by Lenine and Trot- 
zk^^; anarchistic and nihilistic, as represented by Bakounine, 
Stepniak and Kropotkine ; ascetic, as represented by Tolstoy ; 
and socialistic inaction, as typified by Maxim Gorki. Tolstoy, 
a man of the spirit, felt to be a part of all humanity, and the 



26 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

restricted society of the world he placed in the immense father- 
hood of heaven. For Gorki the ideal man is the tramp. He 
believes it is a useless task to flush a sewer and a fruitless ex- 
ertion to bury the dead. Tolstoy not only took literally the 
Christian command of non-resistance, but he carried it to its 
extremest radicalism. 

It has been said by several v^^riters that Lenine is a fol- 
lower of Tolstoy. Nothing is more erroneous, or, rather, out- 
rageous. Who is Lenine? A Russian? A German? A He- 
brew? A Christian? A man of education and talent, or a 
fool of genius? These questions ask themselves and try to 
answer many of the men who are sincerely against Germany 
and who are naturally bitterly disappointed for the trend of 
affairs in Russia. Passion is always blind and misguiding, 
and to make of Lenine a pupil of Tolstoy is an aberration. 
There is not the slightest ideal or spiritual relationship be- 
tween the author of Anna Karenina and the head of the Bol- 
sheviki government. Tolstoy is the only man of the nineteenth 
and of the beginning of the twentieth century who resembles 
St. Francis of Assisi. Lenine is the man in Russia who has 
more points in common with the worst leaders of the French 
revolution. The Russian revolution was a wonder of accom- 
plishment: the constitutional leaders — Lvoff and Miliukoff — 
and their followers, affected the most extraordinary change of 
government in history from night to morning, without con- 
vulsions, without violence, without bloodshed. Had the So- 
cialism of the rabble and of the conceited mountebanks of 
the type of Kerensky left them alone, Russia would have work- 
ed already her own salvation, and the huge fetid cancer of Teu- 
tonic oppression, instead of eating into her heart, would have 
been extirpated by the surgical skill of Brusiloff, Korniloff, 
Kaledine and, perhaps. Grand Duke Nicholas Romanoff, who 
had given unmistakable proofs, in the early part of the war, to 
be the ablest of all generals of the world's war. But the vanity 
of Kerensky and the stupid weakness of his associates opened 
the way to Lenine, Trotzky and their friends. Trotzky is an 
honest man, misguided but in good faith ; and probably by the 
time these pages are printed he has been eliminated from the 
Bolsheviki government. But Lenine is Lenine: immense in 
his perversity, ferocity and stubbornness. The program of 
today is the very same he outlined in 1905, when he prophe- 
sied the "Revolutionary dictatorship," which he defined as 
"the poiver not limited by any law or rule, hut founded exclu- 
sively 071 violence; a 'poiver which should not belong to the 
people, but to a small revolutionary group." This reign of 
terror exists only between Socialists. Lenine has developed 
a new form of czarism. His proclamations to the public are 
almost similar to those of Von Bissing to the people of Brus- 
sels in the beginning of the occupation of Belgium. He de- 
nies even the power of the "Soviet," which seems to him a 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 27 

prejudice of the capitalistic society. Lenine is a monstros- 
ity. While he advocates universal love, universal kindness 
and universal justice, he is unjust, wicked, ferocious in the 
extreme ; he is mad with hatred, and visits his neighbors with 
plunder, persecution, revenge, arrests, calamity, murder. 
While the immensity of the Russian madness may be, in some 
respects, a logical consequence of the reasoning insanity of 
Tolstoy, which has admirers galore even in America among 
people of small brains and big hearts ; Lenine is by no means 
a product of the doctrines advocated by the Saint of Yasni- 
aga-Poliana. 

Tolstoy, in his advocacy of a universal religion of love 
and brotherhood, based on a new revision of the Gospel, suc- 
ceeded a Russian peasant — Sutaieff — who wanted everything 
abolished — laws, public institutions, private property, social 
and national barriers — so that love could rule over humanity 
m.ade free. Sutaieff was an illiterate peasant, and his aposto- 
late was not noticed outside of Russia. But Tolstoy belonged 
to the highest Russian nobility, was a man of learning and 
genius, and his system, filling his vast literary production — 
novel, drama, essay, translating — created a deep impression 
and produced almost a moral revolution in Russia and all over 
the world, except Germany, the country of the superman, who 
has amply proved to be no more and no less than the super- 
animal, as I have contended. Whoever has said that Tolstoy 
took much from J. J. Rousseau was greatly mistaken. Outside 
of his religious and universal love, he preached the doctrine 
of single tax of Henry George, of whom he translated into 
Russian "Progress and Poverty"; and he was deeply impress- 
ed by the "Life of St. Francis of Assisi," by my late friend 
Paul Sabatier, whom I accompanied more than once during 
his researches and peregrinations in Umbria, and whose 
memory should be particularly dear to lovers of freedom in 
general and to Frenchmen in particular. Paul Sabatier, pro- 
fessor at the University of Strasbourg, and an ardent French 
patriot, was subject to the most abominable indignities and 
persecutions by the Germans. 

While Russia was engaged in the war with Japan, Tol- 
stoy was writing from Yasniaga-Poliana the following testual 
words: "My conscience tells me that to kill, in any form and 
no matter what the excuse, is execrable, that war is a mons- 
trous shame, a bloody aberration, and whatever prepares war 
must be condemned." In the same communication he wrote: 
"So far as I am concerned, I would leave to the Japanese St. 
Petersburg, Moscow, Yasniaga-Poliana, where my hearth is, 
and whatever else they would ask." In order to justify his 
attitude, Tolstoy did not limit himself to the commandments 
of the gospel. He screened himself behind the authority of 
Tertullian and Origen ; and amassed quotations from St. Paul, 
Epictetus, Leo-Tsee, Kant, Lichtenstein, Anatole France, and 
others. 



28 Gigliotti^Cor Mundi 

The attitude of the Russian soul cannot be understood in 
America. Tolstoy was regarded as a genius before the pres- 
ent war. Now in many places things have changed. People 
are always ready to abuse and curse whatever seems in op- 
position to their wishes and interests. The Hebrews of Amer- 
ica, especially the ones of Russian extraction, became, with 
very few exceptions, bitter enemies of President Roosevelt 
as soon as the Russian-Japanese peace was concluded through 
his efforts. They had been hoping for a sweeping victory of 
the swarthy Orientals and for the hopeless crushing of the 
Russian empire, sincerely hated by them on account of the 
unbearable persecutions against their kinsmen. Many of the 
Russian refugees who came to America, found here sufferings, 
ridicule, contempt. Because they were learned and honest, 
they were kept down ; while the rascals of their own national- 
ity were prosperous, respected, influential. The first impres- 
sions are always deep and far-reaching in the hearts not only 
of children but also of grown-up people. Instead of investi- 
gating the cause of the strange phenomenon, which is by no 
means the fault of the American institutions, but of peculiar 
circumstances which have dictated these pages, they persisted 
in living in the peculiar settlements where they first landed, 
as an oyster lives in its shell ; they allowed the first resentment 
to guide them, and they returned to their native country un- 
der the impression that we are living here under the worst 
capitalistic slavery and that our government was free in 
words, but in fact as bad as that of the czars. Have not the 
very same things been said even in Socialistic open air meet- 
ings, in the interests of Mr. London's candidacy for Congress, 
of Mr. Hillquitt's candidacy for mayor of New York, of any- 
one who has been elected or who ran for an officee on the So- 
cialistic ticket in every nook and corner of the United States? 
Have not state and federal governments allowed the most ven- 
omous and lying agitators to preach this nefarious and un- 
truthful doctrine from the platform and from soap boxes on 
street corners? At one time I felt compelled to shout at an 
agitator, disturbing the meeting and creating a free for all 
fight: "You are a scoundrel and the most brazenly liar. If 
this government were not the most free in the world you 
would have been sent to the penitentiary long ago." Trotzky 
was one of the men who felt humiliated by the treatment he 
received in the United States of America; and he went back 
to Russia convinced, honestly convinced, that democracy in our 
country was a huge hypocrisy ; that every public office was sub- 
servient to the aristocracy of money and that the common peo- 
ple were as unfortunate and as slave as in his native country. 
Did Mr. London or Mr. Hilquitt, who owe to America what 
they are, absolutely all they are, try to persuade Trotzky that 
he was mistaken ? 

Extreme poverty and extreme wealth make men equally 
deaf to the voice of that greatest of virtues — charity — which 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 29 

dictated to St. Paul : I Cor., 13, one of the most divine passages 
of the New Testament. The treatment which Trotzky received 
is received every day by men of ability and of conscience of 
other nationalities who are compelled to live in those sickly 
outgrowths of American communities, called foreign settle- 
ments. They may produce once in awhile some good; but 
the little good is a drop in the bucket compared to the enor- 
mous amount of harm they do: they are a great menace to 
the country and to the future of civilization. And poverty 
does not always compel people to live there, no matter what 
the luxuriant fancies of settlement writers see in their mor- 
bid fictions about the children of the slums. My personal in- 
vestigation in the time I was the editor of "II Progresso Italo- 
Americano" and ''L'Araldo Italiano," of New York, proved 
to my satisfaction that rents were much higher in the crowded 
tenement districts than in other sections, much more desir- 
able and clean and salubrious, of the city. 

People who come to the United States and stay here for a 
little while have a tendency to judge our country from the 
bad they see ; they seldom take the trouble to see the good. A 
number of years ago, on a transatlantic steamer, I heard some 
passengers saying horrible things of Naples, the city of my 
birth. They had never visited anything more dirty : the only 
beautiful things were the panorama and the surroundings. 
Among the people who were blaspheming so, I noticed two con- 
gressmen, a minister, a judge, a banker, and several ladies. I 
asked of them if they were judging New York from the Bow- 
ery, Chicago from, the slaughtering house district, and Denver 
from Market street, and I offered to show to them Naples. I 
did. Charlotte Kent, the famous American pianist, said to me 
before she left Naples for Vienna : "Why ! Naples is a dream ! 
I had seen the city before, but I never knew it was so beauti- 
ful!" 

But I have to speak of the foreign settlements later on, 
in the hope that my observations will not fall on deaf ears. 

The United States of America have the keys to the future 
of humanity. Magnum nunc saecida nostra venturi discrimen 
habent. 

VI. 

A great seer, in a moment of prophetic effusion, enunci- 
ated a theory which may prove one of the most radiant laws 
of the history of mankind. Philosophy of history is the work 
of Providence in the destinies and actions of humanity. Haz- 
ard, fatalism, climate, are only the limited and sterile excuses 
of limited minds. The only and universal God of mankind 
rejects them as He rejects the diseased vagaries of the mater- 
ialistic conception. He dictates to Aeschylus the observation, 
w^hich must shake the very heart of the Kaiser and his allies : 
"They have seen more than once the punishment of the ones 
who undertook unjust things and went too willingly into war." 



30 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

(Agamemnon, v. 372-376). He, as Carducci beautifully said, 
blew the triumph in the bugles of Joshua. He pushed the ships 
of Themistocles in the Aegean Sea, and announced to trem- 
bling Rome the news of the king's drowning in Lake Regillo. 
He struck with terror the horse of Barbarossa at Legnano. 
Before Him, preceding and following the victory, kneeled 
George Washington, whose head had not been dishonored by 
a crown. 

Will civilization, born in the East, return there via the 
West? If we have to judge from the signs of times, civiliza- 
tion is proceeding almost accordingly to such a theory ; and in 
its long march will stop for ages in America, and select as its 
abode Washington, which will surely be, in our times and in 
times to come, what Rome used to be in a glorious era gone 
by. The dream of America becoming the guiding spirit of a 
rejuvenated and better world is not new. My increasing faith 
in the radiant destinies of the United States, which have been 
picked by Providence to become the Republic of the World, 
started in the beautiful and distant days of my youth, when I 
heard some of the conversations of Gen. Garibaldi, Gen. Avez- 
zana, Louis Kossuth, and others who had been in America after 
the fall of the Roman Republic and the European revolution of 
1848. The radiant aspirations of 1848 had been stopped by a 
flood of blood, not killed. Even the Germany of 1848, in spite 
of the communistic manifesto, was filled with republican spir- 
it, and men imbued with the warnings of Immanuel Kant were 
compelled to ask the blessing of hospitality and of freedom to 
this land of promise. Mazzini had been the prophet of Ger- 
many as he had been the prophet of Italy, Hungary, and of 
every other country which was smarting under the whip of 
tyrants. And Karl Marx had started his nefarious work of 
abusing Mazzini, of discrediting him, of writing against him 
everything human perfidy could invent. The Socialists con- 
tributed to the ruin of the movement of 1848, as they have 
tried — a part of them, to be just — to ruin the efforts of the 
nations which are engaged in the present struggle for freedom 
against the combined efforts of the cross of Luther, the cres- 
cent of Mohammed and the cenobitic garb of Austria. But, 
while the leading Socialists had emigrated to England, the 
foremost republicans of Germany had fled to the United States 
of America, where they hold also congresses. America had 
as guests many of the greatest men in Europe, above all Gari- 
baldi, the knight of mankind, who came to the United States 
after the fall of the Roman Republic and the death by ex- 
posure of Anita, his wife and partner in perils and battles for 
freedom. But Garibaldi was almost unnoticed and made a 
living as a candlemaker, in the little factory of his friend An- 
tonio Meucci, the discoverer of the telephone, cheated of his 
invention. Kossuth, who obtained his freedom from Turkey 
through the requests of England and the United States, came 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 31 

here in 1851 on an American battleship as a conqueror, and 
delivered speeches and addressed Congress, and advocated 
with eloquence and dignity the cause of freedom in Europe. 
He would have obtained much, instead of going to England 
disappointed, if his plans had not been disconcerted and com- 
promised by the Irish and the coming to America of Thomas 
F. Meagher, who had escaped from Van Dieman's Land. But 
it seems a great misfortune for oppressed Erin that, while 
imploring her own freedom, she should always be a stumbling 
block on the freedom of others! Her handicap to Kossuth's 
plans was a matter of accident. But her attempt to help the 
Germans against a cause sacred to the triumph of democ- 
racy, and the last exploits of Roger Casement have filled the 
people who believe in the freedom of nations with disappoint- 
ment and amazement. In the time Kossuth was preaching to 
Americans the cause of freedom for the slaves of Europe, 
came out "Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and 
inflamed the souls. While he was not the exponent of any 
great cause, Franklin Pierce was elected President of the 
United States. Free spirits took as a matter of course that 
his sympathies were with them. The German republicans en- 
treated him to become the head of a movement to convert the 
United States of America into a world's republic. The great 
trouble was that Germans, no matter how much inspired by 
Kossuth, remained German to the core, supermen and selfish 
to the limit. They wanted the United States to become ger- 
manized. None of them rose to the height of the situation 
and to the sublimity of the ideal. They hated the universality 
of Rome and of Paris. It was impossible for them to conceive 
anything different from England and Germany : the first, the 
classical country of utilitarianism ; the second of metaphysics. 
And they made no mystery of the fact that metaphysics were 
the gases of that particular time which should asphyxiate 
England and empower Germany to rob her of her utilitarian- 
ism. Mazzini was an idealist : God and the people. The father- 
hood of God and the brotherhood of man. Love for one's 
country, but reverence for humanity. Germans could not un- 
derstand that. They followed Kossuth because he was a Mag- 
yar, and they considered Magyars people of their own race, 
as they are claiming now as men of German blood the fore- 
most men of the modern world. Did they ever stop to con- 
sider that Kossuth was a pupil of Mazzini, as pupils of Maz- 
zmi were all men of the first half of the nineteenth century, 
who, even in England, had their souls inflamed by the purest 
and noblest ideals of liberty? Russia, Austria, Prussia, and 
all countries ruled by tyrants, were more afraid of Mazzini 
than they had been of the armies of Napoleon ; and they had 
him shadowed and spied continually. Karl Marx wrote his 
own moral death sentence when he called Mazzini an old idiot. 
The aspirations of the German republicans in America 
we find incorporated in a book entitled "The New Rome," 



32 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

and published in 1853 by G. P. Putnam & Co. Authors of it 
were Mr. Theodore Poesche, of Leipzic, and Mr. Charles 
Goepp, of Pennsylvania. Both of them impressed by the cy- 
clone which had passed over Europe in 1848; and both Ger- 
man to the core, they set their hopes on the United States of 
America, an immense country, which nature itself had des- 
tined to be the most powerful nation on earth, provided it 
knew enough to take advantages of the extraordinary re- 
sources of its climate, products and geographical position. 
The London Times, referring with bitterness to the future na- 
ture and Providence had assigned to the United States, ex- 
claimed : "A continent and two oceans are in the hands of that 
people." Washington, being almost in the center of the world, 
should become the New Rome, not in inspiration for good, but 
in a decidedly imperialistic way. The entire book, full of 
quotations and crammed with Teutonic vagaries, seems to the 
superficial observer a glorification of the United States of 
America, an unselfish attempt to induce the United States to 
assume the supremacy of the world, an effort to open the 
eyes of Washington, so that she would grasp her opportunity 
and become the "New Rome." But to the eye of the scholar, 
the historian and the philosopher accustomed to plunge into 
the heart of things and analyze hidden human motives, it was 
only an effort to teutonize America, to sick her on England, in 
order to take away from the British Empire trade, colonies, 
wealth, influence, world supremacy. It is the old refrain of 
German jealousy and dull hatred, embittered and perhaps pol- 
ished by a streak of Napoleonic rage instilled into the hearts 
of Teutonic republicans by Heinrich Heine. Wellington and 
Blucher had parted ways. Germans dreamed of an alliance 
between Blucher and an American Napoleon (Franklin 
Pierce) to destroy Wellington. People familiar with Ameri- 
can history cannot understand how gentle Pierce, one of the 
most inconspicuous men in that age of giants, could, even in a 
sickly dream, become the archangel of destruction for Eng- 
land. But the German mind was unconsciously but surely 
beginning to sow the seed of the conquest of a Teutonic world. 
Wilhelm II has been the logical heir and fulfiller of that mad 
Apocalypse forced into bankruptcy. And America has been 
and is yet the battling ground of those ideas. 

Let me quote from page 87 of the book I have unburied, 
in order to give new matter for food to American minds who, 
emotional in their sparks of genius, produce doctrines like 
those expressed by Theodore Roosevelt in the famous editorial 
published in the Cosmopolitan of February, 1918. Read now 
carefully what Poesche and Goepp have to say : 

"The stupendous greatness of England is factitious, and 
will only become natural when that empire shall have found its 
real centre. The centre is in the United States. The anglican 
empire is essentially oceanic. Its dominions extend along the 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 33 

coasts of the Atlantic and the Pacific, the lesser and the great- 
er ocean. America, lying in the midst of the ocean, is there- 
fore its natural 'point of gravitation. The realization of an 
idea higher than could he developed in the mother island, that 
of the republican democracy, required a temporary segrega- 
tion of the centre; that task accomplished, it is time to call for 
a reunion; but the former adjunct being notv no longer merely 
the geographic centre, but the political and social focus, must 
take the lead. ENGLAND, WITH HER COLONIES, MUST 
BE ANNEXED TO THE AMERICAN UNION." 

If you are acquainted with the secret history of the Prus- 
sian court, which is very different from the historical ro- 
mances of Mulbach, and if you have fully understood the sin- 
ister mission of Stieber, a spontaneous suspicion glides into 
your minds: "Did not Friedrich Wilhelm look with complac- 
ency upon the efforts of the German republicans in America?" 

On the 29th of January, 1852, a congress of Germans at 
Philadelphia formed the "American Revolutionary League 
for Europe," designed, we are informed, to assist in the veri- 
table liberation of the European nations. At this congress the 
following resolution was presented: "That in the opinion of 
the present congress, every people, upon throwing off the 
yoke of its tyrants, ought to demand admission into the 
league of states already free, that is, into the American Union ; 
so that these states may become the nucleus of political organ- 
ization of the human family and the starting point in the 
World's Republic." It received the enthusiastic support of a 
respectable minority ; but the greater number, though profess- 
ing entire confidence with its views, considered its adoption 
injudicious under existing circumstances. On September 18 
of the same year a second congress of the league was held at 
Wheeling, W. Va., and the very same resolution was submit- 
ted again and passed unanimously. It was, we are told, the 
official expression of the political views of the German emigra- 
tion ; but we know positively, too, that it had the hearty sup- 
port of people who were in cordial relations with the govern- 
ment of Prussia. The reader must first consider that the Ger- 
mans — and the Germans alone — were speaking in the name 
of every oppressed people, whose representatives they had 
been very solicitous to keep away from their congresses ; sec- 
ond, that their agitations were not seen with disfavor in 
Prussia and other German states. The German courts, 
which were the legal weapons of the German govern- 
ments, did not consider the German propaganda in Ameri- 
ca as seditious, because they acquitted the Germans at home 
who had been circulating its doctrines in Berlin and else- 
where. And we learn this from the very authors of the book. 
Open at page 101, and read for yourself: "Few, indeed, would 
hesitate to exchange the present German constitution for the 
American, if the choice were offered. The idea of annexation 



84 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

has already been discussed in the German papers, and was re- 
ceived with ivarni approbation. It has been a matter of judi- 
cial investigation in the crimiyial courts of that country, who 
acquitted the authors of all seditious intentions on the ground, 
though their projects involved the subversion of the German 
governments, it did not appear that such subversion was nec- 
essarily a forcible one." 

It seems to foresee the work of Stieber in Austria and 
France. A few more lines: "We are not in want of natural 
allies. The German press of this country now numbers 180 
newspapers ; unequalled in any other language except the Eng- 
lish. It is not yet on a level with the present state of the 
German mind, but the reactive influence of that mind must 
soon be felt and seen." 

From such a movement sprung Karl Schurz. Such a 
movement was going to develop in due course of time the Ger- 
man-American Alliance. The lineal descendents of that move- 
ment have been Hermann Ridder, Hugo Muensterberg and the 
editor of that paper truly inspired by the spirit of Stieber, 
''The Fatherland." 

Immanuel Kant? An excuse. Mazzini? A reproach. 
Washington? A weapon against England. Jefferson? Well, 
they could use to some advantage the theory: "That govern- 
ment governs best which governs least." 

Poesche always professed to be a German. Goepp said he 
was an American. But both men met at the German Congress 
at Philadelphia; they stood side by side. Goepp had publish- 
ed a pamphlet during the Kossuth furor, entitled "E Pluribus 
Unum," and that pamphlet is incorporated in the book, "The 
New Rome." Neither malice nor sympathy guides the humble 
writer of this criticism. Even if the authors of "The New 
Rome" were moved by the best of motives, they misunderstood 
the mission of the United States. More than moral greatness, 
they were advocating material prosperity. Rather, material 
prosperity alone. Accumulation of wealth does not create the 
power of nations. 

I have been — just because the political philosophy of 
Mazzini has attracted me from childhood — a firm believer in 
the mission of the United States in the history of the world ; 
a mission of love and democracy and not of imperialism and 
greed. President Wilson, in his message which was received 
iii Europe and America as the gospel of democracy, stated in 
an unmistakable, inspiring way, the real aims of our country. 
The trouble of the European nations, the hatred between Ger- 
many and England, is much deeper than that from 1740 to 
1914, illustrated by historians guided only by diplomatic doc- 
uments. Diplomacy is perfidy, lie, deception, intrigue, insid- 
iousness. It has nothing to do with statesmanship and will re- 
main the curse of nations till it is shorn of its evils and made 
honest and open. In writing history, diplomatic documents 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 35 

should be properly sifted and interpreted or history will be 
one-sided and misleading. England, at its worst, was always 
liberal. Germany, at the best, was arbitrary, militaristic, des- 
potic. German liberals, then, if sincere, should have been 
more inclined toward England, which had and has such a 
wealth of German blood, traditions, ties, from the ruling dyn- 
asty to many of the leading British families. No. From 1740 
to 1914 they had few agreements, and many disagreements, 
which increased after 1815. Bismarck, the evil spirit, helped 
to prepare the present conditions: he avoided war, which 
seemed inevitable, a few times, only because he was afraid 
Germany was not ready yet to crush the world. Greed was 
the motive power of the actions of the two nations. The 
country of metaphysics wanted to grab the wealth of the 
country of utilitarianism. The country of utilitarianism, 
when it discovered that the country of metaphysics was slow- 
ly but surely depriving her of her commerce and wealth, took 
notice. The famous Tory article of the Saturday Review 
(Sept. 11, 1897) — Germania est delenda — expressed the view 
that "were Germany destroyed tomorrow there is not an Eng- 
lishman who would not be richer." Naturally the Germans 
were indignant, and became more pugnacious than formerly. 
The "repetition of Jameson's raid by the English government 
dictated by banking and mining speculators" filled with deep 
disgust and horror the very few Germans who had admired 
the free institutions of England, and above all Theodore 
Mommsen. Long before that. Sir Charles Dilke, the greatest 
statesman of modern England, sacrificed to British prudery 
and hypocrisy, had seen into the future. He wanted Belgium 
strongly prepared and fortified, because he felt that in the 
case of another war, the German general staff would invade 
France through it. Be it as it may, I am not relating history. 
I am only inferring the lesson of history. Greed has been the 
motive of Germany. Greed has inspired England. To the 
ones — blind, selfish, utilitarian — who believe that trade, traffic, 
commerce, are the supreme goal of nations, the secret of pow- 
er, glory and lasting influence of peoples, it is difficult to con- 
vey the solemn lesson of history. The worst form of blindness 
is that which afflicts those who have eyes and refuse to see. 
Moloch is the most wretched of gods. Greed ruined the Phoe- 
nicians ; brought the downfall of Babylon, Egypt, Israel, Per- 
sia, and Greece; caused the decadence and the ruin of the 
Roman empire; destroyed the power of Spain, ruined the 
Netherlands, brought abjection to the Republic of Venice; is 
the cause of the troubles of utilitarian England; will fatally 
bring Germany into dust, sooner or later, before this war ends 
or after. 

Greed to nations is like tuberculosis to individuals: if 
not cured, will carry them fatally to the grave. May greed — 
which has made blind, deaf and dumb to the voice of human- 



86 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

ity many of the leading men of the United States — depart 
from our midst. May justice inspire all the actions of men in 
public life; and convince them that many national calamities 
are the result of the very actions which have been shown in 
the preceding pages, which seem to lack system only apparent- 
ly, but which are connected strongly by links which will not 
be seen by the ones who have eyes and yet refuse to see. We 
find in one of the greatest masterpieces of the literature of 
mankind — Job: iv, 8 — the warning: "Even as I have seen, 
they that plow iniquity and sow wickedness, reap the same." 

Socrates said to his accusers, as we are informed by Plato 
(Apology) : "He who in earnest contends for justice, if he 
will be safe for but a short time, should live privately and take 
no part in public affairs." It is, of course, the kind of public 
life which has been displayed so far. But when public life 
shall be inspired by the principles of honor and justice, on 
which our country must stand, things will be fundamentally 
different. 

We need an intense spirit of nationalism combined with 
an intense spirit of justice. Deeds and facts, not words and 
phrases. Liberty in tranquillity, not peace resting on a vol- 
cano of rapacity of large interests and of hatred and greed of 
proletarians. No "Act of Enclosure" of Commons, and no 
communistic manifesto. 

VII. 

Did modern history start with the discovery of America 
or with the Reformation ? Many years ago, in a pamphlet en- 
tirely and perhaps justly forgotten, I pointed out that the 
portals of modern history were opened by Martin Luther, who 
had redeemed human reason from the blind tyranny of Cath- 
olic dogma. I was wrong, and more wrong have been people 
who have ransacked my booklet and offered my vagaries as 
discoveries of their geniuses in establishing the laws of his- 
tory. The human mind had been freed before Luther, who 
had the extraordinary merit of founding the German litera- 
ture so rich in material and so poor in quality, had preached 
the Reformation, which was as far from the spirit of real 
Christianity as the present European war is from the views 
expressed by Immanuel Kant in the essay mentioned in an- 
other chapter. In Italy, Bernardino Telesio, from Cosenza, 
Calabria, had disentangled philosophy of nature from the ter- 
rible coils of that boa constrictor of reason which was the 
syllogism of scholasticism. Christianity of the Reformation 
was no more Christianity than that of Rome or that of Cal- 
vin who, more contemptible than Torquemada or Cardinal 
Ximenez, had Dr. Servetus burned for heresy in a public 
square of Geneva, Oct. 27, 1553. 

To be more correct, I would like to state that both the dis- 
covery of America and the proclamation of religious freedom, 



Gigliotti — Co7' Mundi 37 

were the sounding knell of modern history, which gave place 
to a NEW ERA as soon as the United States, coming out from 
their Chinese wall of the Monroe doctrine, entered the world's 
war, not for conquest or self-aggrandizement, but in order to 
save civilization and democracy. I have my reasons to believe 
that, in spite of the magnificent words of President Wilson, 
America would have remained out of the conflict had not Ger- 
man intrigue, arrogance, greed, and frightfulness forced the 
government of Washington into the affray. If the only motives 
had been humanitarian, the deliberations of the American 
Government would have been taken after the invasion of 
Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania. More than the 
interests of democracy and of humanity, the instincts of 
self-preservation, prevailed in Washington. A victorious 
Germany would have meant an oppressed America. Many 
of the American politicians and statesmen, who have been 
relentless in their criticism of President Wilson, had spent 
years in preparing the huge banquet Germany longed to en- 
joy. In the last presidential campaign, the Republicans, 
while displaying American flags and appealing to efficiency 
and American rights, had, as their chief exponents, the 
German American Alliance, and employed as their chief pub- 
licity agents the men who had served faithfully Dumba, 
Bernstorff, and Bolo Pasha. They did it perhaps innocent- 
ly, but they drove from Mr. Hughes thousands who had 
intended to support him, especially in Ohio, and on the 
Pacific Coast, where people are less shallow and more re- 
flexive. I apologize to the readers and to the men in politics 
for this observation, but the lessons of history should never 
be ignored by people who carry in their hands the destinies 
of mankind. 

The discovery of America opened a new field to the op- 
pressed of the world. Christopher Columbus, who was seek- 
ing glory and wealth in a scientific discovery for commercial 
purposes, instead of reaching India, navigating westward, 
found an immense continent unknown before, and rich be- 
yond the fondest hopes. The miserable Teutonic historical 
junk dealers, who tried to belittle Columbus with the tales 
of Norsemen navigators, found willing and busy henchmen 
in American educators, who took and take delight in deco- 
rating school rooms with German rags. But the oppressed 
of the world had in Columbus their first liberator, when he 
first found the way to this great continent. France, Spain 
England, the Netherlands, exploited it. Adventurers, pirates, 
and convicts, before Germans and Sein Feiners started to 
come, settled it, and disgraced it. But Columbus had, against 
his own expectations, become the greatest benefactor of man- 
kind, because, if many evils were introduced into the new 



38 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

continent, inhabited by the Red Skins, numberless blessings 
found their way into it, too. 

Nobody can read the history of New England without 
deep emotion. From England — unjustly abused by indi- 
viduals and nations, which nicknamed her "Perfidious Al- 
bion" — came the two institutions, which slowly but persist- 
ently brought the American colonies into Independence Hall 
in Philadelphia. As rightly says Dr. Edward Elliott, the 
House of Burgesses became the bulwark of popular lib- 
erties, and through it the people demanded and secured a 
large share in the government of the colony. The religious 
motive was primarily responsible for the migration to the 
New World of the Puritan colonists of New England. These 
Puritans, who very soon became Congregationalists, had a 
system of Church government which contained the seeds of 
democracy. The Pilgrims who first arrived to the now cel- 
ebrated Plymouth Rock were misguided Christians, too; nar- 
row and intolerant, as the Independents of England and the 
Calvinists of Switzerland, and very jealous of their faith 
and their freedom, but very ready to commit murder to ad- 
vance their cause; they persecuted, tortured, jailed, burned 
for witchcraft innocent people who had other beliefs 
and observed other religious practices. It is true that the 
Quakers, under the guidance of William Penn, came to Amer- 
ica and, in spite of peculiarities which amused and shocked 
people, restored the simplicity and brotherly love of Chris- 
tianity, which has been revived in the purity and in the spirit 
of the first centuries by the so-called Plymouth brethren. 

America, the promised land of the oppressed and the 
downtrodden, had to shake her yoke from English sovereign- 
ty. The brilliant selfishness of Benjamin Franklin, the dec- 
lamatory but heartfelt patriotism of Patrick Henry, the en- 
cyclopedism of Thomas Jefferson, the inspiring faith and 
magnificent heroism of George Washington, the bravery of 
the immortal signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
preceded the French Revolution; and, proclaiming the free- 
dom of the thirteen original states, eliminated forever the 
British master, established a permanent government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people; and defined very 
clearly the rights and the duties of free men. The French 
Revolution seemed to Mazzini the end of an era, and not the 
beginning of one. The most violent convulsions, arson, pil- 
lage, murder, blind and frightful vengeance: the red flag, 
the guillotine, and the directorate. Louis XVI ascends the 
scaffold ; and when the tigers, who thought the rights of men 
could only prosper in carnage and blood, did not find any 
more enemies to slay, they started to slay each other. The 
heads of Danton, Desmoulins, Robespierre rolled into the 
ghastly basket. And Napoleon arose in the carnage: from 
the aristocratic monarchy, the empire of the upstarts; the 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 39 

grandson of "le roy soleil" had been executed to make room 
for the little corporal! The French Revolution had been an 
appalling cataclysm: ruins of vast proportions were natur- 
ally strewed in its path. It could not last. Mazzini was 
right. The French Revolution closed an era. It was a period 
in one of the most important paragraphs in history. 

But the American Revolution was the beginning of a 
new era, the announcement of a radiant hope to mankind. 
Napoleon sealed the past. George Washington unfolded the 
future. The men of 1848 in Europe took inspiration from 
the United States of America. In France, where the people 
had been kept awake with "Granny" of Beranger, they were 
blessed with the coup d'etat of "Napoleon le petit", as Victor 
Hugo called the third Bonaparte. In America were brew- 
ing the events which twelve years later brought Abraham 
Lincoln to the presidency, precipitated the civil war, and 
abolished slavery. France had shocked the world with the 
horrors of the revolution; the United States had filled the 
peoples of the earth with the blessings of their achievements : 
anarchy there, order here. The "Declaration of Independ- 
ence" stands as the proclamation of the new generations: 
the declaration of men's rights was the last will and testa- 
ment of a disappearing world. 

No rights unless men are ready to perform duties faith- 
fully. The new spirit which pervaded the Declaration of 
Independence, the Revolution, the formation of the United 
States of America, was the new gospel of redemption to the 
people, who had freed themselves from British yoke, and the 
oppressed of the world. All the revolutions of the past — big 
and small — had been limited in scope and bloody in method; 
instead of being the achievement of a lofty goal, they had 
been the bursting of desperation and the outburst of revenge, 
the breaking loose of the uncontrolled and uncontrollable 
savagery of the rabble. Spartacus, Tell, Rienzi, Masaniello, 
Minin, become insignificant shadows when George Wash- 
ington appears. And after Washington, Garibaldi. 

But this country, intended to be the abode and the bless- 
ing of the oppressed, naturally made huge blunders. The 
evil influences of adventurers, the atavic tendencies of the 
criminals imported here, and the selfishness of the Anglo- 
Saxons, intelligent, alert, wise, but extremely utilitarian — as 
typified by Franklin — mixed with the impulsive, inordinate, 
proud, and misguided generous instincts of races other than 
English, were the causes of calamities, which culminated in 
internal strife in that Pharisaical autonomy of • extreme 
selfishness called "the Monroe doctrine" and in the Civil 
War. But Abraham Lincoln, one of the most benevolent and 
resplendent suns in the history of mankind, saved the country 
and gave the greatest of all testimonials that the United 
States had been destined by Providence to be the bay of 



40 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

safety for the oppressed and down-trodden in the storms of 
savagery and fury of intolerance, militarism, and tyrannies. 

Nevertheless, after the Civil War other evils came: seri- 
ous evils, which might cause the ruin of our institutions and 
our country. The building of enormous fortunes has made 
of a very few individuals the uncrowned kings and emperors 
of one hundred millions of people, who are the enemies and 
the great menace of our immense commonwealth: like Dam- 
ocles' sword, they are continually suspended over our heads, 
ready to fall at any moment. They have corrupted every 
branch of our government; and, having in their own pocket- 
books the destinies of hundreds of thousands of men, they 
can trouble for their own selfish ends the most vital interests 
of a whole nation. Oil and coal fields, railroads, steamship 
lines, industries, farm products, banks, everything, have been 
concentrated in their owm hands. The government, which 
they believe their own creation, is at times powerless against 
them; they give to the poor one and extort four; compelled 
by the unions to pay better wages, they get everything back 
with very heavy interest, sending prices sky-high, profiteer- 
ing, robbing openly, unscrupulously, brazenly, in spite of 
the law; and, often, with the connivance of the law. In 
all times and in all nations, the worst enemies of the people 
— as I had occasion to demonstrate a number of years ago, 
while running for a legislative oflJice — are the very rich and 
the very poor, the men who have become conscienceless 
through great accumulation of wealth, and who believe every- 
thing is for sale; and the very poor, who have lost every 
sense of pride and honor, and, like brutes, know no other 
moral than the satisfaction of the stomach and the sexual 
instinct. Both extremes are very dangerous to the security 
of the state, and they should be eliminated; but, before they 
are eliminated, the very rich and the very poor should be de- 
prived of the rights of citizenship. Anti-trust laws are a 
ridiculous joke, when the ones who enforce them are the ser- 
vants of the kings of wealth. 

But, as this great country of ours produced Washing- 
ton, who smashed the British yoke, and Lincoln, who abol- 
ished slavery, she will certainly, sooner or later, give us the 
new liberator, who surely shall accomplish the wonderful 
task of making the United States the ideal government of 
the world, the new Eden. God bless President Wilson, if he 
is the one! 

Bad* is Germany. Horrible is the condition which would 
be our lot were the central empires of Europe victorious. 
But our lot would not be very much better if the ascendancy 
of the enormously rich has to go on at the same pace as be- 
fore. The war will make them much richer, far more power- 
ful; and, if we will not be free from them after we have 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 41 

humiliated and crushed the arrogance of Germany, we will 
only have avoided Scillae to go into Caribdi. 

Over sixty years ago America refused to concede Canada 
reciprocity, and Mr. McKenzie, in the Dominion Parliament, 
amid the deafening applause of his colleagues and of the pub- 
lic assembled in the galleries, declared that the United States 
acted so because they wanted to annex British North Amer- 
ica. A few years ago. President Taft made an effort to get 
reciprocity with Canada, and the Conservatives, who were 
fighting Canada's greatest statesman — Wilfred Laurier — de- 
clared that America wanted reciprocity as the first step to 
annex the Dominion ; and they won on that issue . The truth 
is that the detentors of wealth of over sixty years ago did 
not want reciprocity, because it was not to their interests, 
and for the very same reason the detentors of wealth in our 
time have repeated the unconfessable scheme. The first 
time the American Government was democratic; the sec- 
ond was democratic the government of Canada. 

We are and must be very patriotic. But real patriotism 
must convince us that our country is not only our territory, 
our history, and our flag; but that she is, above all, human 
flesh and human blood; and that the happiness of the people 
must be placed above the power of the state. Justice is 
greater than glory, and righteousness is immensely better 
than success. 

VIII. 

Of late, all belligerents have tried to enlist the sympathy 
of the United States, publishing books, not always impartial, 
buying the press, sending lecturers and missionaries all over 
the country. The Germans, who have spent more money than 
anybody else, gained the favor of big newspapers and maga- 
zines all over the country, and poisoned the minds of unsus- 
pecting people through persistent propaganda, headed by insti- 
tutions of learning and university professors, engaged in the 
most abominable panderage which dishonor men. Hugo Mun- 
sterberg, professor of Psychology in Harvard University, was 
the head and front of pro-German propaganda among intel- 
lectuals. Suspected, denounced, practically caught in the 
nefarious work, he offered his resignation to the trustees 
of the institution. But dignified Harvard, where the spirit 
of the supreme pacifist Channing still gently floats, and 
where the teachings of Professor Harnack of Berlin are con- 
sidered as the gospel of the generations to come, reaflfirmed 
its deep confidence in Munsterberg, and asked of him to re- 
main in his chair. That strange individual, George Sinister 
Viereck, who in that ultra German Fatherland abused every- 
thing American, and after war was declared went to the Roy- 
crofters in East Aurora to make profession of American- 
ism, and to insult with his venomous hypocrisy the very mem- 



42 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

ory of my friend Elbert Hubbard, murdered in the Lusitania, 
needs no special mention here. A spiritual son of J. K. 
Stieber, he is the worthy co-worker of that poisonous group 
of false Americans, who, in order to cover their past infam- 
ous activities, claim patriotic distinction, because they bought 
with ill-gotten money hundreds of thousands of dollars of 
Liberty Bonds. Eternal confusion to the insidious asps of 
a pandering press, and praise and honor to that noble part 
of the American press which spurned all efforts of the enemy 
of mankind! And glory to the magnificent Providence Jour- 
nal, and to its heroic editor Rathom, who unmasked Teuti^n 
insidiousness, and pointed out to perplexed Washington the 
pending danger and the way of salvation ! Unicuique suum. 

Where enemies could not penetrate through American 
publications, they enlisted the cheap services of a foreign 
press, chiefly owned and edited by men absolutely ignorant 
ar.d cynical, who are unable to read anything but a check- 
book. Bolo Pasha made his biggest inroads through such 
an element. A number of years ago, I pointed out news- 
papers which were the official organs of criminal organiza- 
tions. They protested against me, frightened the American 
dailies who were publishing my articles, informed me that 
my life was not worth ten cents, took away business from me 
and bread from my children, and enlisted the sympathy and 
the services of big politicians. I preferred to lose the money 
I was making through my publications, and refused to retract 
one single word of what I had written. Later on, what I had 
predicted became true. Blackmail ran amuck. Black-hand- 
ers operated on a large scale from one end of the country to 
the other. 

Three years ago, at Washington, on Easter day, I read 
the ill-famed appeal to the American people, which was a 
German-Austrian ruse to paralyze all activities and enlist 
the sympathy of the world in the iniquitous cause of the Cen- 
tral Empires. When I perused the signatures of certain for- 
eign editors, who pretended to have contributed to the fund 
for the publication and diffusion of the appeal, I knew at 
once that something was wrong somewhere, because they 
were not the kind of people to give a penny for any honest 
cause, and that they were always ready to bargain anything 
for a consideration. The money for the nefarious under- 
taking had been furnished by Teutonic sources. It was the 
work typical of Stieber and his successors. I raised the cry 
of alarm. It required courage and disposition to suffer cal- 
umny, starvation, and moral and material murder. But I 
performed a duty. Many Italian editors published my de- 
nunciations, and, admitting I was absolutely right, protested 
that they had been in good faith. They contended that they 
had to accept anything a certain individual was bringing to 
them, because their newspapers would be compelled to cease 



Gigliotti — Cor Mwndi 43 

publication if the advertisements coming from that source 
should cease. I said to them: "If you are honest, if you 
have a remnant of self-respect and human dignity, leave the 
pen and take the shovel." I am not personally acquainted 
with the publicity agent of the Central Empires, who has 
been the protegee of republican politicians and organiza- 
tions. I have never been and never had any intention to be- 
come a speculator in publicity. But I blamed and blame sin- 
cerely and unreservedly organizations, firms, and individuals 
who, in order to serve the enemies of this country, have made 
of men, who are as brazen as they are ignorant, the Judas 
Iscariot of the noble nation which gave them what they 
could never have had anywhere else. In Europe nerve alone 
will never make a man important: he must have manners, 
gentlemanship, ability, intelligence, education. In Europe a 
good barber and a good shoemaker will be respected in their 
trade; but they cannot write editorials or preach from the 
pulpit or from the platform, unless they are men of excep- 
tional good sense and intellect. Gamblers, pimps, and saloon 
keepers may sometimes help an unscrupulous but capable 
candidate for public office to win here and there; but they 
will never run for office or attempt to control political par- 
ties. America should learn the lesson. Democracy means 
honor, justice, and efficiency. Prostitution of public office 
is negation of the very essence of democracy, which is order 
and not perversion of the most elementary rules of decent 
government. 

After my discovery and denunciations, the most relent- 
less persecution against me started. Even travelling sales- 
men of Socialism, paid by the secret funds of Berlin and Vi- 
enna, thought it was expedient to take a hand in the new cru- 
sade of vituperation, which pleased very much some of my 
fellow citizens, who could not forget some political differ- 
ences we had had. German gold found its way even into 
unworthy representatives of the Italian Government, who 
were and are very frantic against me, because I unmasked 
them and condemned them to infamy in a poem which will 
not die, in spite of the efforts of the smooth crooks who enjoy 
the special protection of contemptible speculators of patriot- 
ism. Whatever I did, I did for a principle. Everything I 
have gained for years I have sacrificed to the cause of real 
democracy. I am perhaps dying now, but the light of the 
ideal makes happy even my last moments. And dictating 
this essay, or whatever the reader may call it, from my bed, 
I am positive I am performing a last duty. I know that the 
conditions of my health prevent me from ordering, group- 
ing properly, giving system and touch to my information. 
But I have no intention to publish a scholarly book. The way 
it has come to my mind and heart, I have dictated. The read- 
er will certainly excuse the shortcomings, and accept the in- 



44 Gigliotti — Coi' Mundi 

formation, which is correct and conscientious, even if con- 
fused and clumsy. 

Of all foreign enemies of the United States, Germany- 
is certainly the worst. But other nations, who are now 
friendly, because they need our help, have been jealous, too. 
This country is too prosperous. In this vast continent, we 
have every climate, every product, every blessing. No mat- 
ter what people of the United States, who know well other 
countries, and who are extremely ignorant of their own, may 
say, we have everything except ancient history and the mon- 
uments and ruins of glorious countries gone by long since. 
If you want the Coliseum and the Pyramids, the walls of 
Nineveh and the Parthenon, Palmira and Persepolis, Pesto 
and Pompeii, you have to be satisfied with seeing them on the 
screen or depicting them in your imagination, if you don't 
like to undertake a very long journey. But if you love to 
admire the wonders of nature, you find Europe, Asia, and 
Africa right in this immense continent, Colorado is as beau- 
tiful as Switzerland. The snow-capped mountains of the 
West are as interesting and as imposing as the Alps, the Ap- 
ennines, and the Himalayas. If you like a sand-storm, you 
don't need to go to Sahara: in Arizona you can satisfy your 
curiosity to your heart's content. The bay of New York and 
the Golden Gate of San Francisco can save you the trouble 
of a visit to Naples, Constantinople, or Athens. Every na- 
tion in the world has certain things, and is dependent upon 
foreign importations for others. We have everything: wool 
and cotton, coal and iron, lead and copper, silver and gold, 
granite and marble, wheat and corn, cement and lumber, 
vegetables and fruits of all climates, immense prairies and 
magnificent forests, superb internal waterways and two 
oceans. Every nation in the world envies our wealth, our 
inexhaustible resources. Foreign nations have apparently 
let us alone; but they have been the parasites thriving on 
our very blood and flesh. We have fed them. Opening our 
shores to the over-population of other countries, we have 
saved them from revolutions. The money accumulated here 
and sent everywhere by immigrants has made poor nations 
rich, has saved from bankruptcy entire municipalities and 
provinces. We have generously helped other nations on earth 
with food, money, clothing, goods of all kinds, every time a 
public calamity has visited them. In our misfortunes we 
have done without foreign help. San Francisco, devastated 
by a frightful earthquake, by her own virtue, in a short time 
is rebuilt, and becomes more beautiful than before. 

Naturally, other nations would gladly rob us of our re- 
sources and wealth. Scions of impoverished noble families 
have flocked here to marry the daughters of merchants, 
traders, and miners made vain by showers of gold. Adven- 
turers have brought here all kinds of schemes in order to de- 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 45 

part from the American shores with sacks of dollars. Un- 
scrupulous rascals have been and are harvesting wealth, rob- 
bing the unfortunate foreigners of their hard gained money, 
selling them watered stocks, worthless sick, accident and life 
insurance, and real estate at prices not only extortionate, but 
at conditions which mean that the poor buyer, sooner or 
later, will lose everything. Labor agents, generally of the 
nationality of the poor devils sacrificed, have, when supply 
was inferior to the demand, done things which should have 
brought them to the penitentiary several times and for long 
terms. Instead, they found the protection of very influential 
politicians ; and some of them were also appointed or elected 
to offices of honor and responsibility, in the municipalities, 
in the state, and in the nation. Very few foreigners, who be- 
came rich, got their money honestly. The labor agents took 
money from the unfortunate victims for brokerage, charged 
them with the price of transportation, which was offered in 
many instances free, took a percentage of their wages later 
on, and compelled them to buy from them food unfit for hu- 
man consumption. Some of the most unscrupulous of them 
were men employed by railroad companies. 

Many of the unfortunate victims of such a system of 
extortion and slavery have an idea the government is re- 
sponsible for the frightful treatment they receive; and if 
they go back to Europe before they become thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the real United States, they will inflame the 
souls of everybody they are able to approach against the 
savagery of a country of hypocrites and bandits, which has 
the effrontery to pose as the home of the brave and the land 
of the free. It is to a certain extent the case of Trotzky 
and of many of the Bolsheviki, who are denouncing in Rus- 
sia the United States just because, having been here in 
America, they met with frightful experiences. Every wrong 
done in this country through the perfidy of unscrupulous 
politicians or the rapacity of bandits is a liability for Amer- 
ica. In Germany, in Austria, and in Bulgaria unfriendly 
newspapers are illustrating as an answer to President Wil- 
son the horrible facts I have mentioned. And to the gener- 
ous words of ex-President Roosevelt and others, after the 
infamies perpetrated in Belgium, German newspapers were 
opposing the horrors of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Com- 
pany, the outrages of bossism, and the padrone system, the 
lynchings, and other similar pleasantries. A foreign news- 
paper, bringing to light the fact that President Roosevelt 
had appointed, while governor of New York, Mr. James E. 
March as port warden, admonished : "Medice, cura te ipsum." 
Foreign governments, responsible for the very conditions 
mentioned above, speculate on the ignorance and resentments 
of their subjects residing in America, doing everything in 
their power to keep them away from real American spirit 



46 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

and institutions, and inflaming them in every possible way 
against the generous and hospitable country which gave them 
freedom, bread and opportunity. 

The conditions I observed in the beginning in New York, 
exist all over the United States, somewhere more, somewhere 
less, but everywhere a menace to our institutions and to the fu- 
ture of our country. 

Foreigners, living in settlements of their own, keep their 
customs, their prejudices, their language, their hatred for 
their neighbors and for the country which gave them food, 
shelter, and protection. They have their own societies, genu- 
ine nests of disloyalty to America ; their own language, which 
makes them strangers to everything we stand for ; their own 
newspapers; their own habits, often unclean and bothersome 
to the limit of endurance; their own churches, and their own 
flags. They worship their ovioi patron saints or gods, and 
have praise only for their own governments. The pictures 
of kings, emperors, statesmen, and generals, who made of 
them castaways, hang from their walls, and are worshipped 
by them. Once in a while you find among them revolution- 
ary groups — anarchistic or socialistic — but instead of im- 
proving conditions, they make them worse, because they de- 
nounce and curse the United States much more than they do 
the sinister rulers of the nations they came from. Had 
they, in their native countries, uttered some of the expres- 
sions they were allowed to shout at the top of their voices 
here, they would have been arrested, prosecuted, and sent to 
the penitentiary for high treason. Take Goldman, Berkman, 
and many others; they have had the impudence to preach 
publicly that the LFnited States is a worse country than Rus- 
sia under the czars. Fools, demagogues or agents of foreign 
enemies, they have been preparing the ruin of our country. 
If it is true that many of the revolutionary energumens are 
types of the most abominable parasitism; being enemies of 
work and virtue and honor, they tramp around, uttering 
abuse against law and order, inflaming ignorant and peace- 
ful workingmen against their toil, their employers, and our 
government, in order to extort from them shelter, food, cloth- 
ing, and money for their vices and dissipations. The state 
of moral perversion of some of the preachers of socialism 
and anarchism in the country is such that the government 
could prosecute them and send them justly to penitentiary, 
without making political martyrs of pimps, white slavers, 
blackmailers, and crooks. 

These strange states within the state — these little Italy, 
Russia, Poland, Hungary, Greece, etc. — are matters of great 
concern for whoever has eyes and ears, and thinks continu- 
ally of the safety and greatness of the country. The paid 
agents of foreign governments are busy among such settle- 
ments, encouraging them to do all they can to oppose every- 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 47 

thing American. In order to carry on their nefarious work, 
they incite foreigners to apply for citizenship. American 
citizenship, they contend, does not signify that they have to 
renounce allegiance to the country of their birth, but is just 
a scheme to advance her interests. As American citizens, 
they enjoy all the rights of natives, can help to make laws 
favorable to their interests, remaining all the while in good 
standing of their mother countries. The doctrine of double 
citizenship, in the sinister light of fooling America in the 
interests of foreign countries, has been cynically and openly 
discussed in the newspapers printed in foreign languages I 
have mentioned, and in conventions held in European capi- 
tals. It has been done with the knowledge and consent of 
federal authorities, before Mr. Wilson became President of 
the -United States. Adventurers and crooks have used to 
advantage the traitors invested with the sacred rights of cit- 
izenship. Men elected to municipal, judicial, and legislative 
offices have taken orders from foreign governments. In some 
cities every elementary law of common decency has been 
violated by mayors, who have appointed to the bench men who 
had been busy preaching the doctrine of double citizenship, 
or who were the consular agents of foreign governments. 
And that they were able to serve those foreign governments 
much better than the United States is amply proved by the 
fact that they were knighted by kings and emperors. Do you 
suppose for a single instant that a foreign government would 
give a coronet to one of its former subjects who has be- 
come a faithful, conscientious, patriotic citizen of the United 
States? Generosity, gratefulness, homage to merit are 
qualities extraneous to the hearts of kings, who decorate 
only slaves or knaves or people willing to pay the price. Some- 
times, for political reasons, they decorate men of note or for- 
eign representativs who are part of special missions; but 
the men I refer to are not in this class. Now, such men could 
not be fair to both parties. They are betraying one or the 
other. I know positively of foreign consular agents closely 
allied to notorious agents of the Central Empires. They have 
betrayed not only the United States of America, but their own 
governments. And this is the best proof that a man, who is 
low enough to become a spy, is low enough to stop at nothing 
for money: a man who prostitutes his own conscience will 
prostitute his wife, his sisters, his daughters, his mother, his 
own country! Beware, free men of America! Beware of 
them! Beware of traitors, who go around displaying Amer- 
ican flags and delivering speeches on Americanization, in 
order to keep suspicion away from the very nature of their 
secret work, and to prevent the real, unselfish patriot from 
performmg his duty! I can spot many of them. But it is 
Stieber, Stieber, Stieber that I am exposing. It is the sys- 
tem which endangers the dear country of my adoption (the 



48 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

country where my children and my children's children live, 
and where I hope to have rest, when my eyes shall see no 
more the beneficent light of the sun) that I wish to see under- 
stood by everybody, and destroyed so that it cannot come to 
life any more. My own brother is a good, upright American, 
and a professional man of courage and merit; and yet I did 
not stop an instant to denounce him, when he wrote and pub- 
lished things which seemed to me blasphemous. He wrote 
an ill-advised book against woman suffrage, and I was in- 
dignant, because you cannot be a firm believer in freedom, 
if you want that freedom only enjoyed by a part of mankind 
and denied to the other. At Sparta, Lycurgus gave women 
the very same education men were receiving; and Plato in 
his Ideal City advocated absolute equality between the two 
sexes. I have been for equal suffrage since I was 19 years 
of age, since I studied in the original Greek the works of the 
greatest seer of antiquity, who took pride in the fact that he 
had been a pupil of Socrates. To fight what we sincerely 
consider error is a duty, if we have character and deep con- 
victions. If we wish to have some day peace, we must wish 
peace among all people, among all our fellow beings 

The kind of peace the Germans and their allies are ad- 
vocating is not and cannot be of our liking; because we love 
mankind and want the greatest good for the greatest number 
in real Jeffersonian spirit. To the enemies of real democracy 
who misuse the word peace, we can apply the expression of 
Tacitus: "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." 

Only the other day I learned from a newspaper a friend 
was reading to me that one of the most abominable types of 
spies — a monster of ignorance and perversity — had been ap- 
pointed by the mayor of a certain city to a position of honor 
and responsibility! There are in that city Italians well read, 
well bred, able, sincere, honorable to a fault. But men of 
honor cannot be blindly used by politicians. Unscrupulous 
politicians, who climb high not by merit, but by the mal- 
odorous schemings of rascality and graft, need as tools the 
worse flowers of evil which bloom in the garden of human 
degradation. Men with brains and with conscience are a con- 
tinuous reproach and menace to them. Did not rightly ob- 
serve Victor Hugo that the highest peaks are reached only 
by the eagles or by the worms? Until civil service becomes 
a reality in the uncertainties of our political system, it is im- 
possible to expect honor and efficiency everywhere. With 
the exception of elective positions, where, even at the best, 
black sheep have a chance, no public office, no matter how 
low or exalted, should be exempt from civil service. The 
judicial power should be absolutely taken away from politics, 
and be subject to civil service, so that an able man could 
gradually grow from justice of the peace to coroner, from 
coroner to district attorney, from district attorney to com- 



Gigliotti — Co7' Mundi 49 

mon pleas judge, and so forth. The system of electing judges 
is democratic only in appearance, but partisan in fact. In 
many respects it is a perversion of justice. Even the best 
man, in order to be elected, is compelled to be under obliga- 
tions to individuals, who are often stubborn, habitual, and 
cheerful violators of the law. The gentleman of ability and 
integrity is seldom in a position to influence voters. A lib- 
eral supply of liquor and coin has changed in the past and 
will change in the future many responses of ballot boxes. 

The very few words I have said in favor of civil service 
are not new. In the United States of America the civil ser- 
vice reform found great exponents — Theodore Roosevelt, 
above all; but even when civil service was adopted politics 
dominated it, and it often became a joke. Men very high in 
the councils of the nation often used civil service as a club 
against political enemies or as an excuse to prefer somebody 
else for a job to people they had made promises before the 
elections. Hypocrisy is not civil service : it is hypocrisy, pure 
and simple, the most comtemptible mask a man can put on 
his face, the worst blight to public life, the negation of char- 
acter and manhood. 

To the representatives of foreign governments, who are 
engaged in the nefarious work of undermining the founda- 
tions on which our institutions rest, must be added the mor- 
bid ambitions of the cunning individuals of foreign settle- 
ments. They build societies and fraternal orders not for the 
good of the members and the country, but for their selfish, 
tenebrous and unconfessable profit and advancement. Moral 
and material welfare of the members are only on the statute 
books, but find no room in their hearts : they wish to use the 
mob to sell them, to make political capital out of them, to 
keep them in line for the ends of the foreign governments, 
from which they expect money, favors, and titles of distinc- 
tion, and to barter them in order to go to the bench or to 
legislative halls. In other times they were the sponsors of 
the "Mafia" or of the "Black Hand" ; now they are the grand 
masters of organizations, where they admit freely the ig- 
norant and the low criminal, and keep away the honest and 
the able, because they are afraid that the latter may, sooner 
or later, cause their downfall. They make so much noise 
about their love for the United States of America. If sta- 
tistics are not deceptive, see how many of them are willing 
to serve our country, when the hour of need came. Many 
who had taken citizen papers for the reasons explained al- 
ready were furious when they found they were compelled 
to serve in the national army. Newspapers always make 
things worse — foreign newspapers, I mean. They know so 
little of American history and ideals— to be exact, they know 
very little of any history and of any ideals— that whatever 
they say on the subject creates disgust to the ones who know, 



50 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

and confusion to the ignorant. Instead of making of their 
pages a school of education and of civic and domestic virtues, 
they abuse this country, magnify the glories of the countries 
of the birth of their editors and readers, follow with servil- 
ity the representatives of old country governments, and ad- 
dress appeals to the public sometimes to defend notorious 
criminals, some others to protest against legislators, judges, 
or police officials, who uncovered and sent where they be- 
longed gangs of gunners, counterfeiters, blackmailers, white 
slavers, murderers of their own nationality. If there are 
men of great moral worth in their midst, they are very care- 
ful to ignore them. Honorable men do not buy the praise of 
mud-slingers. But if there is any rascal who can give din- 
ners and buy drinks and lend money, which will never be re- 
turned, they say the most wonderful things of him. Such 
ignorance, sycophancy, and prostitution of the noble mission 
of the press — a mission which is at times betrayed even by 
American publications — is very dangerous. It increases the 
number of enemies and traitors among the inhabitants 
of the foreign settlements. If the war had done no other 
benefit to America than to put a muzzle on that venomous 
press, it would have accomplished quite a bit. The nefari- 
ous work cannot be stopped entirely; but the order to print 
nothing about the war, without giving a faithful translation 
of it to the Postmaster, will prevent reptiles from spreading 
harm. I am a firm believer in a free press. I agree with 
Thomas Jefferson, the father and the founder of American 
Democracy. But the press should educate and not prostitute 
minds. Honest criticism is often more useful than unstinted 
praise; but misrepresentation and vituperation should not 
be tolerated in a free country of men of honor. 

The methods of Stieber employed in Bohemia and in 
France should not be tolerated in America. What Berns- 
torf, Boy-Ed, Von Papen, Dumba, and their legion have been 
doing, has been done and is done by all foreign governments. 
Nobody knows it better than the Secretary of State. I have 
an idea that even the seraphic Mr. Bryan, who brought into 
the State Department at Washington the extreme pacifism 
of Leo Tolstoy, necessarily gained some knowledge of it. 

Foreign governments, in order to keep their former 
subjects as their own colonists for commercial and political 
purposes, have depended not only on the methods mentioned 
above, but on the supine complacency of our federal govern- 
ment, which has been very often rich in words, but extreme- 
ly poor in achievements. While every government in the 
world, no matter how humble, has been very emphatic in up- 
holding the rights of its citizens, the United States have often 
and willingly played into the hands of the representatives of 
European foreign offices. American citizenship did not ex- 
empt from military service in certain countries. A man, for 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 51 

instance, coming here from Italy or from Russia, could not 
go for a visit to the country of his birth without being ar- 
rested as a slacker and compelled to serve in the army. His 
American passport was not a protection to him: authorities, 
insolent, arrogant, cynical, would humiliate, ridicule, offend 
him, as soon as he would shelter himself under the protection 
of his American citizenship. "For the present you will go 
to the devil, to jail, and to the barracks. In the meantime 
you can write your president to send here his navy and his 
army." More than once similar answers have been given. 
Similar instances have happened during Cleveland's, Mc-* 
Kinley's, Roosevelt's, Taft's, and Wilson's administrations. 
England, not having the conscription, never gave us the 
slightest trouble. France was the only country in continental 
Europe where American citizenship was held in high consid- 
eration. When Elihu Root— one of the foremost statesmen 
of modern times— was secretary of state, I tried to induce 
members of Congress to persuade him to have international 
agreements, which would guarantee the rights of naturalized 
citizens abroad, provided, of course, they had not been guilty of 
any crime. It seemed to me that foreign governments should 
be persuaded that to say "I am an American citizen" would 
be equivalent to the "Gives Romanus sum" of yore. I don't 
see why America should not be able to enforce the protection 
of her citizens as well as England does. No country in the 
world, before the present war at least, would have dared to 
disregard the rights of a British subject. If a foreign am- 
bassador, for instance, had been told by the secretary of 
state : "My dear sir, we have nothing but feelings of friend- 
ship for your government; but we intend to be treated with 
equal courtesy. If our naturalized citizens cannot go to your 
country without being taken forcibly into military service 
we will be compelled, much to our regret, to hand you your 
passports," foreign governments would have called off their 
u' ,^®"^6"iber, it is impossible to have faithful servants, 
when they know they cannot depend on your protection. We 
have been insulted by foreign governments every time we 
have tried to pass a law to protect our own interests, our 
own labor, our own industries, our own boundaries. Their 
own press in our very continent has poured abuse on Con- 
gress, on the cabinet, on the President. What have we done 
when they have treated with contempt the rights of our citi- 
zens? They are friendly and humble now, because they are 
on their knees, and need our money, our food, our blood. And 
yet, they come in our midst, and get everything they ask, A 
naturalized citizen may have social relations with any of the 
foreign diplomats, just as any native; but social intercourse 
has nothing to do with betraying one's country. Natural- 
ized citizens, who use the glorious country of their adoption 
only as a cow to milk, and for reasons of their own pay trib- 



52 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

ute and take orders from representatives of foreign govern- 
ments, even if those representatives come from nations 
where they were born, have in their veins the blood of Judas 
Iscariot and lago. The foreign settlements in our big cities 
are all equally tainted. In the last municipal campaign in 
New York, the socialists elected to the bench, to the board of 
aldermen, to the legislature, were they imbued *with the 
American spirit? The action of the socialistic members of 
the Assembly at Albany — does that show that they were act- 
ing as men who love the country they are supposed to serve? 
Did Mr. Berger represent in Congress the American people? 
And is Mr. London not, more than the representative of a na- 
tional constituency at Washington, the spokesman of voters 
who are not in sympathy with American traditions and ideals ? 
Do the so-called socialists realize that their high priest, Marx, 
at the time of the Franco-Prussian war, forgot everything 
about the doctrines he had been preaching, and stated em- 
phatically that Germany must humiliate France, and annex 
Alsace and Lorraine, two rich provinces necessary to her 
needs and her expansion? In their indignation about the 
war, have they forgotten how deeply Marx appreciated and 
extolled the American Civil War? Have they forgotten that 
Ferdinand Lassalle, the most sincere and enlightened among 
the founders of socialism in Germany and Europe, stated 
as emphatically as it was possible for him, that it was absurd 
to talk of socialism and peace before the principle of nation- 
ality and the political independence of states had triumphed? 
But knowledge implies study, and study is work. The brand 
of socialists we are mentioning do not seem to be on very 
friendly terms with work. One of them was in need of every- 
thing, and yet he was young, enjoyed splendid health and 
great vigor, and everybody would have been pleased to give 
him work. A friend advised him to get a job, and pointed 
out the well-established truth that work ennobles man. 
"Why," he objected, "have you forgotten that I am a sincere 
opponent of nobility in every form? Work ennobles man. 
To hell with work." If we wish to save our free institutions, 
and start to walk on the path of justice and honor, we have 
to destroy the influences which are undermining our institu- 
tions. We must absolutely eliminate from our midst what- 
ever is a menace to our future greatness, be it the deleteri- 
ous influence of foreign governments and settlements, or the 
hypocritical and dictatorial tendencies of national govern- 
ments, which may have done things of which Abraham Lin- 
coln would have felt ashamed. Abraham Lincoln, the genius 
of America, the man Carducci compared to Garibaldi, and 
Victor Hugo to Lycurgus! Abraham Lincoln, who embodied 
all the virtues of all the seers and all the liberators in the 
history of mankind! Abraham Lincoln, who, in his work of 
emancipation, made America understand that after the abo- 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 53 

lition of slavery, it was necessary to emancipate man from 
himself, to build character, which is the foundation of the 
greatness of a people, because it puts men above dollars, and 
honor above monopoly. According to the best conception of 
statesmanship and international law, great nations should 
become the unselfish protectors of the little ones. The giant 
who knocks down children, women, and old people, revolting 
as he is, is not as bad as the nation which assassinates, op- 
presses, and degrades small states. We have our faults, too. 
We have been unjust to small states in the islands of the Car- 
ribean sea and Central America. And diplomatic methods 
employed by us have not always been above reproach. I have 
no desire to criticize our government, which, especially in 
this moment, has accomplished wonders, and is entitled to 
all our love and our support. But we are longing for a Wash- 
ington which will be the beacon light of righteousness to the 
world, for the New Rome of promise, justice, honor, enlight- 
enment, civilization to mankind. We feel humiliated when 
foreign nations reproach us for what we find blamable in 
them. Our veracity should never be questioned. Like 
Caesar's wife, a great country like ours should be above sus- 
picion. 

IX. 

There are thousands of foreign organizations in the 
United States of America. Practically there is no hamlet 
in all the states and territories where there are no foreign 
settlements. In my many travels I have been surprised to find 
Italians, even in places where I never expected it would have 
been possible for them to go. I found Italians in the interior 
of Japan, Australia, China, India, Persia, Morocco. Even 
in Tobolsk, Siberia, while in a moment of just resentment, 
I was praying in my inimitable slang of Naples, in the cer- 
tainty that nobody could understand me and have me arrested 
for cursing the czar and his employees, who were the most 
unscrupulous and brazen thieves and scoundrels the world 
has ever produced, I was surprised to see a man coming to- 
ward me with outstretched hands, gleaming eyes, and smiling 
lips : "Why !" he said with real delight, "this is the first time 
I see a Neapolitan here. Forget your troubles. I know you 
will accept my hospitality and enjoy a dish of macaroni." 
He was an employee of the Russian government, and advised 
me to be very careful not to repeat the same words in any 
language the Russian police could understand, if I wished 
to reach in safety the end of my journey. 

Among the foreign organizations in America, many of 
them pretend to be loyal to the hospitable country where they 
are thriving. But none of them, in spite of the false pre- 
tenses of their constitutions and by-laws, is really sincere. 
The glowing words and declarations about citizenship and 



54 Gigliotti — Coi- Mundi 

love and loyalty are shameful decoys in order to enjoy the 
protection of the law, to obtain incorporation, and to use and 
abuse each and every privilege. Take a list of foreign organ- 
izations, and find how many of them have names dear to 
American hearts. Even the bitterest enemies of America 
among the inhabitants of foreign settlements must love and 
respect some of the famous names in the history of this coun- 
try. Many of the great Americans have been benefactors of 
the world. Franklin, Fulton, Morse, Edison, with their in- 
ventions, have become citizens of the world. Emerson — one 
of the immortal trinity of the Universalists, the other two 
being Montaigne and Amiel — is a beacon light of transcen- 
dental philosophy. Edgar Allen Poe, the foremost writer in 
America and one of the masters of all nations and ages, is 
the founder of a great and original school. Daniel Webster 
was the peer of Demosthenes and Cicero. George Washing- 
thon, making this country independent from British rule, 
gave inspiration and hope to all the oppressed. Thomas Jef- 
ferson was the founder of the only sane Democracy. If the 
"Social Contract" of poor Rousseau was the gospel of the 
French Revolution, the writings and example of Thomas Jef- 
ferson became the gospel of that new religion of justice, 
honor, brotherhood, equality, and simplicity, which produced, 
later on, thousands of miles away, that immortal master* of 
freedom, Giuseppe Mazzini. Abraham Lincoln, the greatest 
of all Americans and one of the very few extraordinary men 
in the history of the world, belongs to mankind. Henry 
George in Progress and Poverty indicated to the nations the 
only logical way to solve the social problem. And — to name 
another good American, although his fame is not such as to 
defy the centuries — Longfellow, as a poet, is very dear to 
whoever likes elegance of diction and nobleness of thought. 
And yet, how many of the foreign societies and lodges are 
named after them? But every booby of Europe who happens 
to write things not always lofty and inspiring and worthy and 
lasting has been honored by the naming of some organization 
after him. 

Read, for instance, the names of all societies of people 
residing here and born in foreign lands. You will find the 
names of their kings, their emperors, their princes, their gen- 
erals, their statesmen, their scientists, their writers, their 
politicians ; but you are unable to discover a single name dear 
to the hearts of patriotic Americans. Yes, the Polish have 
several societies named after Kosciuszko; and the Italians 
of every state and of almost every city have organizations 
named after Christopher Columbus. But Polish and Italians, 
in honoring the memories of Kosciuszko and Columbus, have 
intended to celebrate the glories of their race, and have had 
no intention whatever to glorify America, which one dis- 
covered, and the other fought for. 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 55 

The same thing must be said of others. The most abom- 
inable hypocrisy in all this is the fact that some of these or- 
ganizations have provisions in their constitutions to encour- 
age Americanization. In a certain convention of one of the 
organizations I refer to, held last year at Washington, one of 
the delegates, who had the virtue of frankness, proposed to be 
sincere and leave entirely out of the statute books the pro- 
visions about Americanization. "How can we serve at the 
same time two masters?" he exclaimed. "We know that the 
aims of our order are exclusively to keep kindled in the hearts 
of its members the flame of absolute devotion to the country 
of their birth and origin. Are we not unworthy of our self- 
respect when we deceive the country which is so generous in 
hospitality?" The presiding officer ruled him out of order 
with the following words, which are absolutely testual : "We 
all know our aims. We are with America only as far as we 
can go. But our hearts are with our country, no matter 
whether naturalizzed or not. Expediency requires just in 
this moment to have certain articles in our statute books, not 
to observe them, but to keep away from us suspicion on ac- 
count of the hyphen issue." I heard such words with my own 
ears. A delegate, who is a good American, protested against 
such an exhibition of hypocrisy, which amounts almost to 
treason; but everybody was on his feet, shouting abuse, and 
denouncing as infamous what was honest, manly, and praise- 
worthy. The riot ceased only when it was announced that 
the police were ready to clear the hall and to arrest the lead- 
ers; but it started again a few minutes afterward. 

Of the action and the ability of the newspapers I have 
already said all that could be said. To waste more time on them 
would be equivalent to take an Indian billiken for a work of 
art, and spend useless moments in stupid admiration. The 
truth is that the great majority of people who come to this 
country, with only the prospect of making money, are morally 
deficient: and the more intelligent and enterprising they are, 
the more dangerous they become to the immediate neigh- 
bors first, to the city after, and to the country finally and 
surely. The Irish saloonkeeper, the German brewer and 
gambler, the Hebrew pawnbroker and installment jeweller, 
the French keeper of bawdy houses, the Italian murderer, 
the Chinese opium seller, the Polish thief, the Russian incen- 
diary, the Austrian counterfeiter, the white slaver from all 
countries, the polished American crook, are by no means typi- 
cal representatives of their countries, because criminality 
has no country of its own. They are just illustrations of the 
truth that when money, and money alone, becomes the goal 
of man, he will fatally follow, without being able to philoso- 
phize on evil, the old theory of Frederick the Great, which 
has been quoted previously. Greed for money is responsible 
for the baseness of politics. In years gone by, I was unable 



56 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

to explain why certain notorious criminals in New York could 
enjoy the friendship and the protection for themselves and 
their pals of the municipal and state authorities — police, 
legislative, and judiciary. But now I understand it perfectly. 
Philadelphia and Chicago, Cleveland and San Francisco, Cin- 
cinnati and Seattle, Baltimore and New Orleans, every city 
and every state, are no better and no worse than New York. 
No reform will bring any change unless voters are made bet- 
ter, and better voters will smash all political machines and 
elect honest men. Many laws tend always to hamper justice. 
Summum jus summa injuria. Take greed away from men's 
hearts, and you have taken away crookedness. When a man 
believes money is the supreme end in life, he will make money 
honestly, if he can; but he will become a counterfeiter, a 
crook, a pickpocket, a procurer, anything in the criminal 
scale, if it can be done without danger. Morally, there is no 
difference between a real estate dishonest deal and a bur- 
glary: if any, the burglar will be the more honorable of the 
two. But the real estate dealer helps to make the laws, and 
the burglar does not; hence the difference in the treatment 
through the administration of justice. 

People who come from foreign countries to make money 
and to enjoy the same pleasures, privileges, and power of the 
wealthy oppressors they left behind, will stop at nothing to 
succeed. As money is their only goal, they study how to make 
and keep it, without the annoyance of police and judicial inter- 
ference ; and so they spend freely to elect to office people who 
will take care of them, and give them a share of their illicit 
profits to compensate them for the risk they take in persecut- 
ing the small offenders, and leaving in peace the big. No man 
became exceptionally rich, except by mere freaks of for- 
tune. Almost always the measure of honesty of a man of 
ability is his pocketbook. Socrates gave as the best proof of 
his innocence to his judges his poverty. Look around. The 
worst thieves are not always in the penitentiary. Conditions 
arising from the present war have shown clearly how many 
real honest men we have in our midst. Do you have, if you 
are in good faith and perfectly impartial in your estimate, 
more respect for the highway robbers, or for the grocers and 
the bakers who bought cheap large amounts of goods which 
they are selling back to a long-suffering public at enormous 
profits ? I know of Italian grocers, who bought Roman cheese 
for 28 cents a pound and less, and are selling it at two dol- 
lars! Do you have an idea how many millions of dollars the 
makers of domestic macaroni have robbed in the last two 
years? Do you know how much stuff, poorly manufactured 
here, is sold as imported to an unsophisticated public, when 
importations of such goods have ceased long ago? Many of 
the people, who are engaged in selling life necessities, display 
American flags, have Red Cross buttons in the lapels of their 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 57 

coats, extol the patriotism of the government and the hero^ 
ism of the soldiers, and rob unmercifully, unscrupulously, 
and in cold blood the American people; and the most abom- 
inable thieves are not Germans. Money! Always money! 
Does it give happiness? Does it make people better? Does 
it uplift the ones who possess it, and make of them a blessing 
to the community, and a source of inspiration to the luke- 
warm and indifferent among the wealthy? And yet, there 
is much more happiness in giving than in receiving, as can 
be testified by people who have received from nature and God 
the gift of good hearts and generous souls ! Nobody has an 
idea of the perfect happiness a man or a woman engaged in 
humanitarian work experiences after hours and hours spent 
rescuing, feeding, clothing, nursing, consoling, burying. 

Danger, discomfort, weariness, suffering, physical ex- 
haustion, lack of rest, food, and sleep, are not felt. When you 
seem near collapse, new strength, wonderful, unexpected, di- 
vine, comes to you. The more you do, the more you like to 
do. The smile of the wounded you have rescued, the bless- 
ings of the mothers whose children you have restored to 
them, the victory you have won over the elements of blind 
devastation and destruction, even the grumblings of ingrati- 
tude often you notice around, make you happy in the midst of 
so much unhappiness, give you the feeling of greatness among 
so much squalor, offer you the best proof that immortal is 
the soul of man, beautify and idealize the divine spark of 
your mortal and decaying clay! Only he who knows what it 
is understands me. Enjoy banquets and dances; take part 
m brilliant events; spend days and evenings and nights in 
social functions, celebrations of all kinds, dissipations; and 
next day you feel tired, dissatisfied, ashamed, weary, dis- 
gusted with yourself, with life, and with mankind. Men and 
women m the height of their social successes have commit- 
ted suicide. Only a few days ago, the famous Italian philos- 
opher Roberto Ardigo', the very old and worshiped profes- 
sor of the University of Padua, cut his throat with a razor 
leaving on his desk a sheet with the words: "Life*? Is life 
worth living?" Had he in mind to follow the example of 
Lato, who committed suicide when Rome lost her liberty? 
But work done for the sake of humanity — no matter how 
hard and even superior to physical endurance— makes you 
leel better next day; gives you a great peace of heart and 
mind while your material strength is collapsing. I have 
had some very good and some very miserable days in 
my stormy life. But the only memories which fill with de- 
light my heart are the days of strenuous intensity I spent 
performing my duty in locations visited by awful calami- 
ties: floods, pestilences, earthquakes! I had very little 
patience with kings, queens, and other pretentious and gilded 
human mud. But I worship the very footsteps of Helen of 



58 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

France, Duchess of Aosta. Why? Her work in the service 
of humanity has made of her a divine being, and has given 
her style and her books that immortal spark of life w^hich 
fills you with enchantment. Versailles under that powerful 
master Louis XIV was, in spite of her brilliancy, "vanitas 
vanitatum." That real descendant of Louis XIV makes a Ver- 
sailles of any hamlet ; but a brilliant, useful, blessed Versailles 
— be it a hospital for the relief of the victims of the earthquake 
of Messina and Reggio, or a Red Cross ambulance in the Ital- 
ian battle front. 

"War is hell!" wrote Sherman. True. But blessed be 
the war, if it will restore human sentiments and understand- 
ings in our hearts. The people, who are accumulating wealth 
through war, need some good, powerful stimulus to cease be- 
ing hoarding animals, and return to men. If their homes 
would be visited with some calamities, as the heroic deaths of 
their children in the battle front, if their daughters would vol- 
unteer their services as war nurses and could, after a period of 
noble and useful service, come back home to relate their ex- 
periences, if the inevitable hardships would visit them with 
unusual severity, their hearts would be inevitably touched; 
and they would realize how empty it is to be rich and power- 
ful, and how inspiring to be human. 

The wild hunting for wealth is the greatest of our curses. 

In many countries of Europe — impoverished by the enor- 
mous expenses of big navies, large standing armies, huge sal- 
aries to kings, emperors and royal families — the enormous 
emigration to America has been for years and years the great- 
est of blessings and assets. The millions, who came to 
America, made political unrest less dangerous, bread riots 
almost impossible, and caused poverty to disappear. Foreign 
savings banks, belonging to European governments, were 
made the depositories of millions and millions of dollars. Very 
poor communities became affluent. Cities, provinces, and 
states, very near bankruptcy, were saved by the magical 
stream of gold coming incessantly from America. People, 
w-ho had hardly pennies, became the proud possessors of hun- 
dreds and thousands of dollars. Families of peasants and 
workingmen, who had known nothing but rags, corn or chest- 
nut bread, abjection, with the money received from America 
became at once well-to-do, influential, arrogant; because it is 
one of the bad traits of the humble to become intolerable as 
soon as money turns his head. We know how ridiculous, ar- 
rogant, and contemptible are the American upstarts, who mis- 
take snobbism for gentlemanship, and insolence for mark of 
distinction. High taxes, large expenses, unproductive lives, 
caste prejudice, stupid vanity, love of appearances, slowly but 
inexorably impoverished and brought to sheriff sale many of 
the most conspicuous families. Large estates, palaces, where 
the nobles had dwelt, castles, were sold for a song, at public 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 59 

auction to the sons and the daughters of old tenants, servants, 
and slaves. Some scions of the nobility saved their fortunes 
from impending wreck by marrying the rich daughters of 
peasants, shop-keepers, people who had acquired wealth by 
brigandage, smuggling, blackmail, prostitution, and espion- 
age. Others, more enterprising, put their titles in the matri- 
monial markets of foreign agencies. Yet, a few of them, 
stunned by the suddenness of their extreme poverty, but still 
proud and self-respecting, emigrated to America and else- 
where, in order to expiate, forget, make an honest living, 
where nobody knew who they had been. Once in a while, 
among humble laborers, you find men who have seen better 
times: clean, reserved, dignified, well bred, and cultured, they 
live like hermits, spurned by their companions, alone with 
their spleen and regrets, misunderstood and often humiliated 
by the pretentious natives, who judge men not by their moral 
worth, but by the size of their pocketbooks. 

Foreign immigrants generally crowd the sections of cities 
called the slums, living in poor tenements, in half dilapidated 
houses, without air, without light, without water, near rail- 
road tracks, river beds, disreputable resorts of the lowest kind. 
More than human dwellings, they have often the appearance 
of beasts' dens. People live there in obscene promiscuity. In 
the same room, where man and wife sleep in one bed, there 
are several cots for boarders. Nine or ten beds in a room are 
not an unfrequent occurrence. For a small monthly sum men 
have bed, washing, and cooking; and sometimes they share 
the wife with the landlord. Honor? There is no sentiment of 
honor for people who worship only money, no matter who they 
are. Sometimes, jealousy blinds them and makes them com- 
mit murder. Jealousy, and not honor. Women, who had a 
remnant of self-respect, and refused to prostitute themselves, 
once in a while killed ; and juries in several parts of the United 
States acquitted them. Make it a misdemeanor to keep board- 
ers the way it is done in foreign settlements, and crimes of 
this kind will become a thing of the past. But the picture is 
not complete. Filthy diseases are often spread to the whole 
household. People living that way are a serious danger to the 
health of whole communities, and often ruin, on account of 
their horrible superstitions, many poor children. There is a 
hideous superstition common to the low classes of several 
countries, that sexual diseases and syphilis can be easily healed 
by communicating them to unfortunate small girls. And the 
list of such heinous crimes would seem appalling to the statis- 
tician, if he could get it. How many people are mistaken for 
insane for similar practices! Even my late friend Lombroso 
mistook them for unfortunate victims of a revolting form of 
insanity. People of such low standard of morals — at times 
more deserving of pity than wrath — must be redeemed in spite 
of themselves, and interference with the work of social better- 



60 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

merit and epuration, should not be tolerated, no matter where 
it comes from. I have visited, studied, observed, investigat- 
ed, seven different settlements of seven different foreign na- 
tionalities. It is true that I have found some of the same re- 
volting features among natives addicted to drink, and coming 
from Anglo-Saxon, Irish, and Dutch parentage and ancestry. 
Unicuique suum. A prominent physician, who has indulged 
in studies on sociology and preventive medicine, stated in a 
pamphlet read in a foreign medical congress that the United 
States had a great responsibility, because many of the for- 
eigners who come here in excellent health, return to their na- 
tive countries with tuberculosis, dying of it, and communicat- 
ing it to communities previously free of the scourge. The 
phenomenon is true, but the conclusions and the comments are 
erroneous. The author of the pamphlet was praised and 
knighted by the government of his native country, on account 
of the defense of his unfortunate countrymen against a nation 
which sacrifices in cold blood and for greed numberless lives of 
poor immigrants. I have an idea — and I may be, so far as 
preventive medicine and sociology are concerned, a little more 
competent than the illustrious author of the pamphlet men- 
tioned — that the real responsibility belongs exactly to the gov- 
ernment of the mother country of the immigrant who con- 
tracted the tuberculosis. The United States is not responsible 
for the health of people who have no regard for themselves. 
Greed, inordinate thirst for saving money, miserly habits 
only are responsible for the phenomenon. Many of the men, 
who go back with tuberculosis, in order to accumulate money 
for the reasons given above, saved the nine-tenths of what they 
made living in filthy and crowded surroundings, buying 
spoiled food, practising inexpensive lewdness, menacing other 
people's health, without being in the least danger from outside 
contagion. And, if taken ill or becoming entangled in criminal 
prosecutions, they went back to the countries of their birth 
poor and in broken health, it is because the medical and legal 
sharks of their own nationalities cleaned their pockets. Pro- 
fessional parasitism is simply revolting in foreign settle- 
ments. Fakers, who advertise extensively, are a disgrace to 
our country and to the system of publicity of our press, which 
should not accept advertising unless absolutely honest and le- 
gitimate. And yet, I have found that there is not a faking ad- 
vertisement intended to rob foreigners which has not the 
criminal connivance of men of the very nationalities marked 
for exploit. But professional ethics very often covers a multi- 
tude of dreadful sins. A large percentage of tuberculosis is 
due to syphilitic contamination. Often, pathologists, who are 
hunting for the bacillus of Koch, should look for the spiro- 
choeta pallida. The majority of foreign women, who are 
treated and operated for gynecological and other diseases, 
have been ruined by men who married because their physicians 
assured them they were in perfect health. 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 61 

By denouncing the traitors of foreign countries, I do not 
spare the rascals who were born in America, and who take 
special delight in defiling the flag of the United States. Wild 
hunting after money is unfortunately a peculiar American 
disease ; and Dr. Waite, who expiated his crime in the electric 
chair, symbolized that dreadful form of insanity of which can 
be said : Venenum in auro bibitur. 

Who is the high school boy who does not remember the 
very familiar verse of Virgil : 

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames? 
Lust for gold induces men to stop at nothing. 

X. 

In recent years a just and merciless campaign has been 
waged against the menace to our peace and our future and the 
disgrace of our body politic — the hyphenated citizenship. Men 
in politics and journalists of some reputation encouraged, when 
it was to their advantage, the monstrosity; but now have 
joined in the thunder of protestation; and it is to be hoped 
that they are sincere. Selfish politicians are seldom sincere; 
they take advantage of everything, and with the same light- 
ness of heart and acrobatism of mind, they extol to-day what 
they cursed yesterday, and may find ridiculous to-morrow 
what seems to-day very serious and of capital interest to the 
country. The hyphen is certainly a great menace: this coun- 
try is warming in her very bosom the venomous snake which 
will later put in jeopardy her precious life. The unfortunate 
specimens of mankind described above, revolting as they are, 
should be pitied, because they are the victims of an order of 
things for which they are not and cannot be responsible. Vic- 
tims of the infamy of governments of thieves, and scoundrels, 
who robbed them of what is the common property of all men — 
the land — they have fatally become corrupted and corrupters. 
May God stop our own government in the nefarious work of 
perpetuating in this country the robberies of land, which have 
created and are creating monopolies and slavery everywhere. 
America has produced the new gospel of land freedom — Pro- 
gress and Poverty of Henry George, the prophet of our civili- 
zation, the man who makes complete the doctrine of democ- 
racy, which Thomas Jefferson enunciated; and unless the 
message is received and the light accepted, we may go to per- 
dition, in spite of the fact that we carry in our hands our sal- 
vation. "When starvation," said Henry George, "is the al- 
ternative to the use of land, then does the ownership of men 
involved in the ownership of land become absolute. Private 
ownership of land is the nether millstone. Material progress 
is the upper millstone. Between them, with an increasing 
pressure, the working classes are being ground. Historically 
as ethically, private property in land is robbery. It has every- 



62 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

where had its birth in war and conquest, and in the selfish 
use which the cunning have made of superstition and law." 

In the American commonwealth, no form of degradation 
and slavery should exist; the very shadow of treachery and 
espionage should be destroyed. There should be no German 
towns. Slavish settlements, Jewish communities, little Italies, 
Chinatowns, or any other aggregation of people of foreign race 
— united in tongue, heart, nationality, and traditions — in the 
big and small cities of the United States. And no representa- 
tives of foreign governments should be permitted to rule, un- 
der any excuse, any of the settlements, to meddle in our affairs 
or to speculate, in violation of our laws, and under protection 
of diplomatic privileges, which constitute the most dangerous 
and infamous of all smugglings. A foreign representative is 
a guest of honor; and a guest should be a perfect gentleman, 
polite, respectful, discreet, jealous of his rights, and scrupulous 
in the performance of his duties, but, above all, absolutely in- 
capable of minding other people's business, or of meddling in 
the management of his host's house. When a guest oversteps 
his privileges, and becomes inquisitive, cumbersome, untact- 
ful, and obnoxious, he is politely invited to depart. Now, how 
many of the foreign representatives are accustomed to keep 
within the bounds of gentlemanship and honor? Have we not 
been offered the unmistakable proofs that Germany, in order 
to subjugate, without any upheaval, Brazil, the Argentine Re- 
public, and other South American nations, has been busy for 
years in colonizing them according to a system unknown to the 
old Romans? Had the experiment not been disturbed by the 
complications of the present war, they would have slowly but 
surely undermined the power of the United States of America, 
and put us in a state of political and economical slavery, with- 
out us suspecting it. We have been sufficiently informed of 
the deeds of the Germans and the Austrians. Had conditions 
been reversed, we would have discovered that the representa- 
tives of other governments we now call allies have been less 
desperate, but no better. After all, you cannot make a bulldog 
out of a pointer, or a dove out of a hawk. 

Foreign settlements in our midst, with their organiza- 
tions, business, newspapers, government officials, look like 
states within states — San Marino in Italy, or Andorra in 
Spain. Remaining the way they are, they will never become 
good Americans, or be in sympathy with our country, which 
feeds them, as the body nourishes the malignant tumor, 
which will in time poison and kill it. Preventive medicine 
shows how to avoid diseases and epidemics. Political and so- 
cial hygiene should show how to preserve a state from dele- 
terious infiltrations, corruption, and disintegration. The 
average man cannot jump from slavery into freedom without 
losing his balance. A child must be watched and guided in his 
first steps. What Dixon says in "The Clansman" is in part 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 63 

true, and applies to every race which has not known the bless- 
ing of a constitutional government. Russia is to-day a very 
eloquent example of it. A dog, so far as he remains a dog, 
cannot live without a master; and a slave, if good, is almost 
like a dog. You cannot expect much of him, if you have not 
restored him to the dignity of man. Education alone, as it is 
believed by good men, who are working under the delusion 
that evening schools will solve the problem, will be of little or 
no avail if the immigrant is not given a man's conscience. The 
unfortunate creatures who come from oppressed, downtrod- 
den, poverty-stricken countries, blessed by the system of land 
spoliations mentioned, are slaves, even if slavery does not exist 
in the statute books of the nations they come from. Take, for 
instance, the poor peasants of Russia, Austria, Poland, the 
Balkans, Greece, Spain, Italy, and, to some extent, Germany, 
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland! Everybody knows the 
conditions of the largest portion of Ireland, made worse by 
the nefarious interference of the Church, which is obdurate in 
forgetting that temporal and spiritual affairs cannot blend. 
And this applies to all religions and to all people. England, 
m spite of her wonderful political freedom, is she not a curse 
to civilization with her lords possessing everything, even the 
land on which London is built, and all the population practic- 
ally reduced to the condition of tenants? Perhaps, of all na- 
tions in the world, none has more crimes to expiate than Eng- 
land. From William of Orange down, thefts of land on a 
colossal scale have been perpetrated. There is nothing more 
monstrous than English oligarchy. The Acts of Enclosure of 
Commons are the most infamous form of parliamentary rob- 
bery. The origin and the history of the Bank of England are 
a moral monstrosity. Child slavery— infamous and bloody in 
all European manufactories— was so terrible in England that 
Sir Robert Peel had to introduce his famous bill, which was 
partly a reparation. No justice will come out of the present war 
if the British Lords will not make restitution of lands, or adopt 
the single tax system. May the Lord open the eyes of Amer- 
icans, so that they will cease once and forever from creating 
monopolies, and keep away from the frightful system of land 
robbery of their British ancestors ! We condemn the material- 
istic conception of history of the socialists of the so-called sci- 
entific school, and the reader knows what we think of the 
moral worth of Karl Marx; but his book, "Das Kapital/' 
should be studied by the student of social problems. Marxism 
IS by no means socialism. A man can be a Marxist and a par- 
tisan of any form of government — republican, constitutional 
or autocratic. I convinced Jaures of this truth nearly thirty 
years ago in spite of the protests of Jules Guesde. And in an 
address I had the honor to deliver a dozen years ago before the 
iLrie Press Club, I tried to point out what real socialism is, and 
1 observed that if socialism, is a just and lofty aspiration to 



64 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

better human conditions, every good hearted and sound mind- 
ed man is a socialist, no matter whether he is a Republican 
like ex-President Roosevelt or a Democrat like President Wil- 
son. No matter what our political affiliations, if we are famil- 
iar with history and economics, we can subscribe to the follow- 
ing words of Karl Marx : "If money," according to Marie Au- 
gier, 'comes into the world with a congenital bloodstain on one 
cheek,' capital comes dripping, from head to foot, from every 
pore, with blood and dirt." 

Switzerland is in a peculiar — and yet happy — predica- 
ment with her three parts : French, in love with France ; Ital- 
ian, in spiritual communion with Italy; and German, in sym- 
pathy with Germany, so much in sympathy with her that she 
has been helping the kaiser from the first day of the war, and 
keeps in Zurich, Basel, and Berne a regular general staff of 
followers of Stieber. France is the only country in Europe 
where the peasants and the workingmen are not entirely de- 
pendents ; and the magnificent heroism of her soldiers, and the 
sublime patriotism of her civil population — women, old folks, 
youngsters — show that she is one of the very few countries in 
the world with a civic and national conscience. Her traitors 
are the exception and not the rule — mostly socialists like Cail- 
laux — and when apprehended and convicted, she does not play 
with them, giving light sentences and pleasant promenades to 
Atlanta, Georgia, like America, but she delivers them to a fir- 
ing squad. No pity for the cobra-de-capello. If France 
would cease once and forever to be an aristocratic republic, 
and be really a government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people, what a glory to her, what a pride to mankind ! 
A republic with princes, dukes, and earls, intermingled with 
socialists, Orleansists, and Bonapartists, no matter how glori- 
ous and lofty, seems an absurdity. The cross of the Legion of 
Honor ought to be enough. It is the only decoration and the 
only nobility of which any man of principles and honor can be 
proud. 

It has been said already that the unfortunate men men- 
tioned above were slaves in fact, if not in name, in the coun- 
tries they came from. In order to buy their tickets to Amer- 
ica, they had to borrow money from vile speculators — the most 
vulgar types of uncircumcised Shylocks — who go to mass every 
morning, carry a rosary in their pockets, and cross themselves 
if they hear a profane word : in spite of the law, they charge 
interest at the rate of from two to five hundred per cent. 
So far as Italy is concerned, I have documents in my posses- 
sion. This is not an exaggeration. And they have to pay a 
fat tax on emigration to the government, too. 

Is there any surprise if they come here only to make 
money, in order to go back, and become in their turn oppres- 
sors? And they play into the hands of their governments in 
the hope that upon their return they will be treated with 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 65 

marks of respect. Their resentment, hatred, accursed greed 
for gold, made of them the miserable human rags we see in 
the crowded boarding houses, in the tenements, in the foreign 
settlements of big and small cities. Their servile minds and 
hearts put them at the mercy of adventurers and wretches, 
who are mistaken by the superficial American observer for 
leaders. Moral lepers cannot lead in anything but cowardly 
criminality. While the poor creatures occasionally are caught 
and pay the penalty, they harvest the ripe and luscious fruits 
of white slavery, burglary, blackmail, counterfeiting, gamb- 
ling, conspiracies, plotting, spying. I know of an owner 
of a little jewelry store, which does not give him twenty dol- 
lars a week at the best, who has saved in less than two years 
seventeen thousand dollars in cold cash. Somebody, who is 
in a position to know, tells me that a man from Canada brings 
him every week large quantities of silver dust, for which he 
pays little and sells to a big Buffalo firm, realizing large pro- 
fits. A certain business man came a few years ago from Italy, 
starving and in rags. He has made a fortune. I knov/ that 
he is not only the confidential agent of counterfeiters and 
black banders, in whose interest he has enlisted the services 
of certain misfit representatives of the law; but he has been 
and is a notorious scamp in the service of the German spy sys- 
tem. His chief occupation has been that of plotting against 
the men who have spent noble and useful lives, preaching the 
gospel of freedom. And yet, men like these are very popular 
among the great and boisterous patriots, who worship no 
other flag than the American banknote. I have a list of them, 
properly indexed, for future reference. For patriotic reasons 
of the highest order, I have warned men in responsible posi- 
tions to keep away from them: but I have been looked upon 
as a crank. My insanity is my love for America, my firm and 
radiant belief in the wonderful mission of the United States 
in the history of the world. I sincerely love the poor creatures 
I am describing as they are. I have been among them, divid- 
ing with them my bread, and trying to show them the right 
path to follow. But the masses are often carried astray by 
false gods. If I desire with all my heart to see them good, in- 
telligent, bona fide citizens of this country, it is for their own 
welfare. This is the land promised by God : why should peo- 
ple try to go back into bondage and affliction? 

Somebody has suggested to me that people coming from 
other nations cannot live forever. Their children, being most- 
ly born in America, will be — he insists — good citizens. And 
this is a delusion and a blunder, a calamitous delusion, and 
the worst of all blunders. American schools — no matter what 
the pretenses of American educators — exercise the mind and 
develop the body; but unfortunately are no builders of char- 
acter. Children become very efficient in mental arithmetic, 
enjoy calisthenics, and learn to play football and basket-ball. 



66 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

But they are not taught discipline, politeness, kindness, regard 
for others, respect for older people. In order to build charac- 
ter, the primary school and home must proceed hand in hand. 
No teacher — no matter how good and well-meaning and pains- 
taking — can accomplish much in this direction, if his or her 
efforts are not encouraged by a hearty cooperation of parents, 
and especially of mothers, who are the first and most useful 
builders of character. The first impressions are never for- 
gotten. My modest, but careful, impartial, and persistent ob- 
servations, have shown with mathematical certainty that the 
children of the immigrants mentioned seldom become useful 
citizens; with very few exceptions, they add to the vices of 
their parents, and of their environment, the vices of the na- 
tives of the country. The good qualities of both do not seem 
to impress them at all. A blending of stupendous vices, they 
grow into lives of mere bestiality, when they do not become a 
menace to society, and the object of public charge. The gun- 
ners, who left their exuberant youth in the electric chair for 
the murder of Rosenthal, the gambler, were an illustration 
of the children of foreign settlements ; and the law, instead of 
punishing itself, because it had been incapable of preventing 
their crimes, executed them. 

Schools, as they are conducted, do not improve things. 
The children of the Russians, the Germans, the Italians, the 
Hebrews, the Austrians, the Polish, the Greeks, etc., unless 
their parents are people of refinement or naturally and excep- 
tionally virtuous, become monstrous blendings of the bad traits 
of the different races among which they grow. I have observed, 
in a certain section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, inhabited 
mostly by Hebrews and Italians, Hebrew children with the 
worst characteristics of the Italian slums, and Italian children 
with the worst traits of the Jewish rabble. When, referring 
to a boy of a foreign settlement who has made good, news- 
papers and educators extol the race they came from and the 
environments where they grew, they utter one of the most 
typical conventional lies so genially illustrated by Max 
Nordau. 

The entrance of the United States into the war has proved 
the truth of my contention. Make careful researches in the 
settlements typically German. You find that the ones who 
have more bitterly denounced the American government and 
the more enthusiastically upheld the kaiser and his allies are 
not the old German residents, but their children, mostly born 
and grown up in the United States. I have investigated and 
studied the phenomenon directly, persistently, and patiently. 
Pointing out facts of this nature, I have not the slightest inten- 
tion to denounce, belittle, or offend anybody: my only aim is 
to show the right path out of wilderness and danger. First of 
all, no foreign settlements should be allowed ; second, the im- 
migrants should be rescued in spite of themselves; third, the 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 67 

work of Americanization should be carefully planned and sys- 
tematically and skilfully carried out by men of great experi- 
ence and knowledge, who are, more than schoolmasters, psy- 
chologists, sociologists, philanthropists, absolutely familiar 
with the needs, the conditions, and the peculiarities of the 
races they have to reach. Incompetent men, ward heelers, 
unprincipled speculators of patriotism, ignoramuses full of 
false pretenses, do often irremediable harm. The late Jacob 
Riis, one of the purest souls God ever created, often, on his 
way to the New York Evening Sun, stopped to see me at the 
editorial rooms of "II Progresso Halo- Americano ," to talk over 
some of the splendid things he intended to do among the people 
of the settlements. Once I said to him that the most important 
and useful work would have been the destruction of the slums 
and the abolishment of the settlements, a real "sventramento," 
as they used to say in my native Naples. Richard Harding 
Davis, who happened to hear my remark, said that I was the 
most radical of all anarchists. And the nickname stuck for 
some time, and was perhaps the origin of a famous and 
very inaccurate article in the New York Herald, where I was 
described as the pontiff of anarchism. I was at the time sec- 
retary of "Federation of Thought and Action," which was 
working incessantly for an Italian Republic, and for a Repub- 
lican Federation of European States. As my colleagues in the 
stupendous task, the New York Herald was kind enough to 
give me, among others, Alexander Berkman, whom I had never 
seen, and Emma Goldman, who was once introduced to me by 
a New York civil engineer, Signor Caggiano. I kneeled before 
the pictures of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Henry 
George, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, asking of them if they had 
ever heard of myself betraying their immortal teachings. 

Every immigrant should be granted a temporary permit 
of residence, as it is customary in Switzerland, where laborers 
go during certain seasons to return to their homes as soon as 
their work is done. The ones who intend to settle in the coun- 
try and express an intention to become citizens, should be by 
the government judiciously and fatherly distributed in the 
various agricultural and industrial centers. I do not like to 
be misunderstood. I had and have no sympathy for the alien 
and sedition laws, which were adopted in America during the 
presidency of John Adams. Jeffersonian Republicanism, as 
typified by Abraham Lincoln, should be restored as the perma- 
nent policy of the country, and as a model to all nations lean- 
ing toward democracy. 

Give a family of peasants an extension of good, tillable 
land, irrigated, fertile, attractive ; make them cultivate it ; ex- 
tend them the blessings of appropriate rural schools ; free them 
from the parasitism and crookedness of their countrymen; 
give them the benefit of rural credit, so useful and wonderful 
in results in farming centers ; be their friends instead of their 



68 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

aggravators ; and you will make of them good neighbors, good 
citizens, and good Americans. Doing so, you will build up the 
character of their children, who will be the citizens of to-mor- 
row ; and awake in their hearts the love for the farm, deserted 
and even cursed, on account of the exactions, aggravations, 
spoliations of fiscality, which seems to begin to Russianize even 
the free soil of America. Legislators, who are paying more 
attention to industrial than to rural centers, are blindly pre- 
paring the ruin of the country ! The greatness of a nation de- 
pends more on the austere virtue of the farmer than on the 
brilliant frivolity of the city dweller. Culture and agriculture 
are the pillars of a sound state. Rome prospered beyond the 
fondest hopes of her citizens, and produced Cincinnatus, while 
she remained a community of farmers. When she was lured 
by the artificial life and magnificently empty splendor of 
decadent Greek civilization and perversion, her ruin started. 
Julius Caesar paved the way for Romulus Augustulus. How 
true is the observation of Horace that enslaved Greece con- 
quered Rome! Semiramis and Cleopatra survived their and 
their country's ruin. Aspasia and Phryne, from prostrated 
Greece, passed into Rome. Lewdness and greed, which de- 
stroyed Hebrew civilization, will destroy any nation, no matter 
how powerful, if not banished. 

You may find sporadic vice in farming communities. Per- 
version is the rule in cities. New York is almost on the same 
level with Vienna — the most corrupted city in the world — Ber- 
lin, Petrograd, Brussels, London, and Paris, before the war. 
France has been purified since the war gave her such a bath 
of red blood of heroes. Sodom and Gomorrah have disap- 
peared. Sappho has returned to Greece. De Sade and Masoch 
have gone to Austria. Joan of Are is the pride of the country. 

Farms in many of the European countries have become 
a burden to the tillers of the soil. Taxations, government 
spoliations of all kinds, usury, calamities, poor years, have 
disgusted the farmers, who have emigrated to the cities or to 
foreign lands, in quest of better returns and more human 
treatment. What has happened in other countries will hap- 
pen to America, if our blind politicians do not open their eyes, 
and come to better counsel. In many farming communities 
the exodus has started already. Unless you make the soil at- 
tractive and productive and farming prosperous, famine and 
moral decay will be the result. 

By diverting foreign immigration to farms, you will ben- 
efit immensely the immigrant, and render a great service to 
the country. But you cannot do it, unless you use wisdom, and 
you have the courage, the determination and the patriotism to 
destroy the infamous monopolies, which are dishonoring the 
commonwealth. The system of lordism without coronets 
should come to an end. No man should be allowed to own 
more than a moderate extension of land. And all land which 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 69 

is not improved and is kept just for parasitical speculation 
should be expropriated without any regard and without com- 
pensation. Remember the deep philosophy of the parable of 
Jesus, and of the punishment of the servant, who buried the 
money, and left it unproductive. All immense tracts of land, 
acquired for little or nothing, or obtained through robbery 
encouraged by political looseness and corruption, should be 
unmercifully expropriated, and given to the willing and to the 
industrious. Single tax will be the great remedy. By adopt- 
ing single tax — which must be modified in industrial and com- 
mercial centers in order to properly solve new problems which 
escaped the great mind of Henry George — the legislator 
will secure a great and glorious era of farming prosperity. 
Unless big industrial and commercial enterprises are nation- 
alized they must pay a convenient and proportionate share 
of government expenses in taxation, without enslaving the 
wage earners, or they will become worse monopolies than they 
have been and that the large and unscrupulous profits of war 
have a natural tendency to make. In a free, modern, progres- 
sive country, no man should be allowed to concentrate in his 
hands too much wealth and too much power. Accumulation 
of wealth in a few hands is worse than czarism. Big inter- 
ests are as dangerous to the security of nations as Prussian 
militarism and British control of the seas are to the peace of 
mankind. Socialism, as it is generally understood, is far from 
our minds, because we do not like to see civil life transformed 
into a machine, and we absolutely agree with many of the ar- 
guments of Yves Guyot used in his old but golden book, "So- 
cialistic Tyranny." One of the most disheartening spectacles 
in history is the communism of Sparta. Individualism, prop- 
erly understood and developed, shorn of selfishness and 
spurred by noble ambitions and emulations, is a blessing to 
mankind, because it is the motive power of progress. When 
man becomes an automaton, life will be no more worth living. 
Heart's bravery, which gives so magnificent examples to ad- 
mire and emulate, disappears. And heart's bravery does not 
reason, does not waver, but goes straight, blindly, as swiftly 
as lightning, where the cry of the dying comes from. Indi- 
vidualism has moved the generous people of the United States 
to send immediate help to communities visited by public ca- 
lamities. Collectivism has made Russia the horrible Bolsheviki 
marsh it is now. Individualism had sent our relief to Belgium 
and Serbia and ambulances and nurses and physicians galore 
to bleeding Europe long before we had any idea Teutonic in- 
famy would compel our peaceful nation to enter the war. 

While the rural immigrant must be directed to the farms, 
the industrial part of immigration should be distributed ju- 
diciously among manufacturing centers. The blind, selfish, 
and often ignorant exponents of a certain kind of organized 
labor — who are responsible for many blunders in immigration 



70 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

legislation, like the stupid Burnett law — do not seem to real- 
ize that the unmerciful competition does not come from skilled 
labor, but from peasant invasion of factories and industrial 
plants. With the prevailing American industrial system, a 
man, who has only been familiar with pick, shovel, spade, fork, 
and plow, can become a machine operator in a very short 
time. 

Only a slow, intelligent, and persistent process of assimi- 
lation can make of the average foreign immigrant a good, 
faithful, useful citizen. Some of the most typical American 
families were, only one or two generations ago, British, Ger- 
man, Italian, Swede, French, Russian, or Austrian. But they 
went upon their arrival to live in strictly American communi- 
ties, where they acquired the habits, the manners, the tastes, 
the ways of thinking of the new environment. Many inter- 
married with Americans. Would you imagine that such a 
splendid example of American womanhood, Ida M. Tarbell, 
comes from Italian stock? Her ancestors were Italian, and 
settled on a farm in Erie County, and among their new rela- 
tions are people by name of McCullough. Tarabelli was their 
original name. I could mention names galore. The process 
of assimilation is an easy one, if properly understood and 
applied. Theodore Roosevelt, the greatest living exponent of 
Americanism, the man who symbolizes the race and its 
achievements, comes from genuine and typical Dutch and Ger- 
man ancestry, thoroughly Americanized. But General Sigel 
remained German, in spite of his gallant participation in the 
Civil War, as Italian through and through remained till he 
breathed his last that other famous Civil War veteran. General 
Luigi Palma di Cesnola, director of the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art in New York. William Waldorf Astor, in spite of the 
immense obligations his ancestors owed to the United States, 
had in his blood a pronounced dislike for America and Amer- 
icanism, which had been very often shown by other members 
of his family, especially a departed lady, who introduced into 
a certain artificial set the exaggerated exclusivism of British 
nobility and the strange snobbism of the upstart. In years 
gone by, when I had time to indulge in studies on American 
society, I had many moments of real merriment at the expense 
of some of the so-called four hundred, and some of the people 
who had been entertained at Newport, and who had come 
from Europe on matrimonial expeditions, were among the 
more active in caricaturing them. Richard Croker, the former 
czar of Tammany Hall, remained Irish to the core, as British 
remained, in spite of the vastness of the fortune acquired in 
the United States, Andrew Carnegie. Why? Because they 
lived, no matter how active their participation in American 
life, as strangers among strangers. 

If assimilation is impossible in countries governed by 
tyrannical monarchies and empires, it is easy in free nations. 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 71 

I don't know of better Britishers than the Rossettis of Eng- 
land. French, Germans, and Italians live happily together in 
Switzerland. Malta has been easily assimilated by the British 
government. Nice, Savoy, Corsica have cheerfully become 
French. But Alsace-Lorraine has never been satisfied under 
German rule, and the Italians of Trento, Trieste, Istria, Dal- 
mazia, will never rest while they remain uhder Austrian rule. 
Races and nationalities can be blended and transformed in 
America, because the pursuit of happiness is a task common 
to all in our country. But, of course, no assimilation is pos- 
sible, when the nuisance of foreign settlements is maintained. 
Take the Hebrews. Those among them who live scattered, 
away from their typical settlements, have become sincerely 
American, and no restoration of the Jewish nation in Pales- 
tine could induce them to leave the United States. The mis- 
sionary and prophetic activities of that modern Moses of Zion- 
ism, the late Theodore Herzl, author of "Der Judenstaat," 
will never impress or attract them. But those who remain in 
their own typical settlements, and speak, pray, and think in 
their own language, will never become good Americans, no 
matter how many representatives they may be able to send to 
city halls, county courts, legislatures, and Congress. Even a 
lofty man, like Judge Brandeis, becomes unconsciously par- 
tial, when he has to decide about that typical pair of anar- 
chistic disturbers, Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, 
who are Hebrews and Russians. 

Of all influences, which keep foreign to our institutions 
even naturalized inhabitants of foreign settlements, and make 
of them,, if the occasion arises, alien enemies, the Church is 
not the least ; the Church naturally which holds services in the 
language of the particular communities. Strange as it may 
seem to the simple minded American reader, foreign govern- 
ments consider churches, where the teaching and the preach- 
ing is done in their own languages, as a part of their "sphere 
of influence," which in diplomatic parlance means nationalistic 
propaganda, control, and benevolent, but not less dangerous, 
espionage. Everybody knows that missionaries were always 
employed by governments to prepare the way for peaceful or 
violent invasion of other people's lands. But how many know 
that foreign governments give financial help to churches, in 
order to maintain schools and services in their own languages ? 
And yet, priests and ministers of religion, who more persist- 
ently carry on this work of undermining our institutions, are 
loved, welcomed, honored by selfish politicians and blind public 
officials. 

Men should not be kept down on account of race or color ; 
but race or color should not entitle anybody to special treat- 
ment and privileges. Let all cults and schools and meetings 
employ the language of the country. A common language is 
the foundation of nationality. Quebec will never be an in- 



72 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

tegral part of Canada while language and traditions keep alive 
the old conflict between French and British habits, interests, 
longings, and incompatibilities. Assimilation of the different 
races and peoples, which form the American Commonwealth, 
is a necessity, if our country has to live, lead the world, and 
shine in a firmament of glory. The conflicting nationalities 
must be blended in a very harmonious body, social and politic, 
which will be our own blessing, and the admiration and in- 
spiration of mankind. Education is necessary. Schools are 
indispensable. But education and schools will make things 
worse, if character is not properly built. A criminal, able to 
read and write, is much more dangerous than an illiterate one. 
The criminal of finished education is the most dangerous crea- 
ture in God's world. An illiterate Stieber would have been 
useless to Pangermanism and its prophets, Friedrich Wilhelm 
and Bismarck. Hindenburg, Mackensen, Ludendorf, Von Tir- 
pitz, Conrad, Enver Bey are brigands of education and refine- 
ment. If Pancho Villa had received half of their education and 
opportunities, he would have conquered the world. But I real- 
ize that by having called them brigands, I have offended the 
memory of Fra Diavolo. I apologize. 

Take good care of the immigrants. They may carry in 
their bosom the best hopes of the country. The most unfor- 
tunate of them all can become the father of a future President. 
Mr. Nannetti, son of Italian immigrants, was one of the best 
lord mayors the city of Dublin ever had. Benjamin Disraeli, 
the famous British statesman, vv^as the son of Venetian Jews, 
who would never had dreamed that their child was going to 
be Lord Beaconsfield. Signor Pellegrini, former president of 
the Argentine Republic, was the son of a poor Italian cobbler. 
The ancestry of the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and many of the 
foremost American families, was extremely humble. The 
New York City Directory for 1786 shows that Oliver Vander- 
fcilt had a shoe repairing shop at No. 4 Water Street, and that 
John Jacob Astor kept a second hand store close by. Who were 
the parents of Abraham Lincoln? By solving properly the 
problem of immigration, and by creating a citizenship loyal, 
honest, patriotic, unselfish, we only insure the success of our 
mission in the world. 

XI. 

Some of the men, who have become all of a sudden patri- 
otic for business reasons, were and perhaps still are members 
of the German-American Alliance, of the Patriotic League of 
America, another German organization formed to oppose 
Theodore Roosevelt and to prevent the re-election of President 
Wilson, and a purely advertising association, pompously styled 
"Foreign Newspaper Association." Recent disclosures have 
more than proved the truth of assertions I have been making 
for the last three years ; and are more than a vindication for 
the attitude I took in the la.st national campaign. I am out of 



Gigliotti — Co7' Mundi 73 

politics now, and if I shall live, I may never enter it again. 

Will the lesson teach anything to politicians? Will they 
be fooled again by the enemies of the country ? Many of them 
are in perfect good faith ; and their only fault is that in their 
craving for victory at any cost, they become extremely gullible, 
and take for granted the claims of any devotee of that model of 
candor, sincerity, and unselfishness — Stieber. The revelations 
of the president of the Toledo Chamber of Commerce are a 
matter of old knowledge to me, as old knowledge are the truths 
I have revealed in the preceding pages. Not all truth can be 
proved in America, where a legislation, strange and often con- 
trary to reason, calls evidence what is stupendously deceitful, 
and rejects as non-admissible induction facts, which leap from 
the sifting of the most stringent logic, as virgin mountain 
streams spring from rocks. And for this reason, unworthy of 
the most specious cavils of the lowest sophistries, men caught 
with the goods are sent for short periods to the penitentiary 
for the capital crime of espionage, and people only guilty of 
differing in minor details from the war lords of the country, 
and even of not believing them equal to the task of leading the 
country to a successful termination of the conflict, are brand- 
ed as enemies. 

The fact remains that all foreign nationalistic organiza- 
tions — no matter what the nationality, the language, the pre- 
text, and the specious claims — are antagonistic to the best in- 
terests of the United States, and even a menace to its future. 
Not only the hyphen should be suppressed, but everything 
w^hich makes it possible. Patriotism is a farce and a hypoc- 
risy, if it is not deeply rooted in the heart. People who believe 
that material welfare alone makes the country, are worse than 
foreign spies: that Latin motto: Uhi bene, ibi patria — where 
it is well with me, there is my country — gives me the chills. It 
is the argument of venality, chicanery, and moral perversion. 
It makes people display the flag, sing the songs of the father- 
land, and sell her to the enemy. It induces merchants to deco- 
rate their stores, and hang on their doors signs and mottoes of 
the foremost patriotic effusion, and rob the soldiers who are 
on their way to sacrifice their blooming youth on the altar of 
the country. Immense is my faith in the cause of freedom. But 
freedom is a power for good and not for evil. Hospitality 
does not mean the permission to the guest to dishonor, rob, 
and poison us. Brigandage is a crime, and to allow foreigners 
to come here to practice brigandage in our cities means on the 
part of our legislative and judicial authorities to be abettors, 
"particeps criminis." 

The state has a right to protect itself. No foreign paper 
should be permitted to circulate, through the mails or in any 
other way, unless a special permit has been granted by the 
proper authorities for highly commendable and patriotic rea- 
sons. Ten anarchistic newspapers will not do as much harm 



74 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

as a publication with Americanism on the lips and treason in 
the heart. Honest criticism is always a blessing. Flattery is 
never sincere. Smoothness and treachery walk always hand in 
hand : a psychologist who knew his business rightly remarked 
that a woman is never so affectionate and full of attentions to 
her husband as when she is planning to deceive him. 

No charter should be granted to foreign organizations, 
and all given already should be repealed. Constitutions and 
by-laws should be in English, and all business should be trans- 
acted in the language of the country. Protests from politicians 
and naturalized citizens against any action of the kind should 
be considered as high treason, and as such punished. Legal 
advice to the poor should be given by lawyers of the highest 
merit and integrity employed by the government ; and private 
labor agents should be forbidden by state and federal laws. 
The government should maintain everywhere labor agencies 
and employment bureaus free, scrupulous, fair to the wage 
earner, and absolutely divorced from politics. No interfer- 
ence of foreign representatives, foreign agitators, or 
ministers of religion should be tolerated. Interest of 
foreign representatives in laborers' misfortunes is very 
often as selfish as it is dishonest. Consular agents of 
foreign countries have made a business to grow rich 
on the misfortunes of their countrymen, and the biggest share 
of what should have gone to the families of those who lost their 
lives in labor tragedies, went to unscrupulous lawyers, to dis- 
honest and ignorant interpreters and meddlers, and to the 
sharks who were appointed by their government to carry on 
such a deceitful, rapacious, and bloodstained task. The gov- 
ernment alone, through its competent special representatives, 
free of prejudices and full of human sympathy, should look 
after the interests of the victims of accidents. It is true that 
they may be sometimes influenced by politics, or turned from 
the right path by graft. But how many times foreign repre- 
sentatives have sold the rights of the unfortunates they were 
supposed to protect to unscrupulous contractors and inhuman 
corporations? An inquest conducted by the government 
without fear and favor, would give surprising results. 

All private and parochial schools, where other languages 
than English are the channel of conveying instruction, must be 
suppressed. They are at freedom to teach their own language, 
as schools and colleges are free to teach any language and any 
branch of human knowledge; but only as a part of the curri- 
culum, and not as its scope. 

Preaching in foreign languages should not be tolerated. 
Only by special permission it could be allowed in cases urgent, 
advisable, and considered opportune and favorable to our ideal 
by the government, state and national. We must invite co- 
operation, but should absolutely prevent conspiracy. The Lib- 



Gigliotti — Coi' Mundi 75 

erty League buttons of the Teuton agents cannot deceive the 
lover of America and Americanism. We despise both Catilina 
and Julius Caesar. The reason why this country is drifting 
fast toward the prohibition vagary is not because the people 
have all of a sudden become opposed to beer, wine or whiskey, 
but because the interference of liquor dealers in politics has 
become disgusting and unbearable. The chief debauchers of 
the foreign element, the most dangerous allies of Stieber, are 
people engaged in the manufacturing and dispensing of intoxi- 
cants, who have delighted us with strange hyphenated alliances, 
liberty leagues, and ignorant, unscrupulous, and cunning in- 
dividuals sent to city, state, and national oifices to make and 
unmake laws for their own benefit. 

Somebody will observe that in this appeal, I am denying 
the very principles of liberty, which have been the ideal of my 
life, and which have made me misunderstood, persecuted, 
and unhappy, all over the world. If liberty is anarchy, they 
are right; but if liberty is order, justice, and brotherhood, they 
are deadly wrong. I am against coercion in any form. But 
the coercion of the mob is often much more violent than that of 
the minorities, guided by reason and constrained by system; 
and I perform a duty in advising my countrymen to keep their 
eyes open and to prevent surprises, which might be a serious 
menace to the future of America and civilization. One ounce of 
prevention, say the common people, is worth a pound of cure. 
People, who, in their quest for freedom, go into extremes are 
always wrong. Truth and justice are never found in extremes. 
In Medio Virtus. You will not in the name of freedom let peo- 
ple commit arson, rape, murder, or even suicide; neither will 
you allow the patient of a contagious disease to go free and 
scatter infection all around. Foreign settlements, which I have 
truly representated, are a hot-bed of contamination. We have 
pestilence enough among the natives, which requires the un- 
usual efforts of experts in preventive social medicine, to wish 
any more. Unless we are disposed to attend to a prodigious 
and colossal work of social hygiene, we will be compelled, later 
on, to depend only on the aid of extreme surgery, which kills 
many more than it cures. Justice and revenge are mortal en- 
emies ; and yet we see continually justice taking her delight in 
revenge. The criminal is often the victim of bodily or social 
disease, which should make of him the subject of pity rather 
than of harsh punishment. It is the duty of the legislator to 
be the real doctor of social disease. And it iS exactly a social 
disease which I have examined in these pages ! 

The extreme materialism, to which our glorious country 
has been sacrificing for many years, deviating from the right 
path indicated by the signers of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, 
the thousands who sacrificed their lives in the Civil War so 



76 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

that the country could live, had made of the United States a 
kind of shrine to the god of gold. But the war has awakened 
the dormant virtues, and a rejuvenated America, strong, good, 
trusting God and her mission in the world, will wave to man- 
kind the flag of real freedom, of true democracy, which means 
the crumbling of sectarianism, divisions, and oppression, and 
the establishment of the radiant kingdom of the fatherhood of 
God and the brotherhood of man. 

XII. 

When the present war broke out superficial observers 
thought little of it. They had an idea that in a few months 
everything would be over. Whether Germany or France was 
going to be victorious, it was of little concern to the most. 
Teutonic propaganda had so poisoned the minds of most of 
the Americans that they publicly, insistently, and forcefully 
expressed the hope to see Germany and Austria ruling Europe. 
Even in public schools some American teachers were not 
ashamed to champion the cause of Teutonism. Newspapers, 
magazines, colleges, had been influenced to a very large ex- 
tent by German propaganda. The interchange of professors 
had helped Germany considerably. Many universities had 
been so deeply transformed and influenced that they were un- 
able to think except in German; and I refer to the leading 
ones. Publishing houses, in giving out collections of the best 
thought and literature in the world, had favored principally 
Germany and almost completely set aside Latin thought and 
literature, from which the best the Teutons possess has been 
ransacked. Bacon is worth all the German philosophy, and 
there is nothing in German literature, ancient or modern, de- 
spite the wild claims of the clumsy Grimm, which can even 
distantly compare with Dante and Shakespeare. You see that 
I have refrained from mentioning Latin models, in order to 
show to Alfred Harmsworth that his own country, which he 
and his countrymen did not fully appreciate till the supreme 
trial and test came, in spite of the accusations of utilitarian- 
ism by the Teutons, had been far ahead of Germany in the cen- 
turies. 

I was reading, a few days ago, certain books of a Chicago 
professor of criticism, a strange criticism, without broadness, 
without insight, without deepness, without knowledge of the 
people he was judging and of the times in which they lived. 
He forgot to add to the titles of his books, "Made in Germany." 
In judging Rome, he followed the jealous comments origin- 
ated in Germany, distrustful of everything and everybody not 
German. Caesar was one of the few men of antiquity who im- 
pressed and conquered the German mind, because Caesar is 
the hero after German conception. The professor from Chi- 
cago, of course, in order to show that he had some originality. 



Gigliotti — Coi' Mundi 77 

said the most amusing things against Caesar, hypocritically 
commenting that, after all, there was some excuse for Caesar, 
because he lived in a pagan world, and Christianity had not 
been born yet. Right, professor, right. Germans and their 
allies are so civilized now because they are following the 
teachings of Jesus! Haeckel, the enemy of all religions and 
the author of scientific material plundered from Darwin, could 
not reason any better! How many enemies have I made only 
because I warned my American friends, as I had warned my 
Italian and French brothers, about the dangerous path they 
'were following! It is true that at the time I came to 
America, being much younger, I was more radical ; and in my 
missionary work I put more fire than charity; as it is true 
that, having been all my life an outspoken advocate of fair 
play and sincerity, I hurt many, because I called and do call 
things by their own names, and if words sometimes do not ex- 
press entirely my ideas, it is only because my limited knowl- 
edge of English prevents me from using the very expressions 
which would faithfully photograph my thought and its pecu- 
liar shadings. When the war broke out — I was saying — the 
superficial observers thought very little of it. But everybody 
with a sufficient knowledge of history, of modern means of de- 
struction, of mad militaristic preparations, of growing 
social unrest, of economic conditions, of the uncontrollable 
greed of that trinity of evil — Germany, England, and Japan — 
of a Teutonic net of intrigue and espionage, which was becom- 
ing for mankind more unbearable than the mythological gar- 
ment of Nessus, of problems of nationality, which, in spite of 
the powerful narcotics of 1848 and following years, did not ebb 
away in slumber and had been menacingly awaking, every- 
one of them knew it had to come fatally as the day of judg- 
ment. People, who were working under the delusion that the 
frightful discoveries of appalling means of destruction would 
make future wars impossible, forgot the warning of Bacon, 
justly called to mind by Jean Bloch: "In the vanity of the 
world a greater field of action is opened for folly than for rea- 
son, and frivolity always enjoys more influence than judg- 
ment." 

John Bloch, a poor Polish Jew, became enormously rich 
building Russian railroads; and in the last years of his 
life spent his time and a great amount of money, studying 
conditions and possibilities of modern warfare. From 1890 to 
1898 he gathered in six volumes the fruit of his observations, 
meditations, conclusions, which were published by Ginn and 
Company of Boston, under the title "The Future War." Mr. 
Bloch died in 1902, and has not lived to see the fallacy of his 
views that, on account of the new, povv^erful means of destruc- 
tion, future wars, which would mean the destruction of all 
armies — of invasion and defense — would be a physical impos- 
sibility. But he was perhaps right when he claimed that a 



78 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

European conflagration would end in a draw. In the times of 
Mr. Bloch nobody had yet an idea that wars could be fought 
from the sky and from the bottom of the sea. The modern 
submarine and the flying machine were a matter of conjecture 
and experiment. The first man who pointed out to the unsus- 
pecting Britishers the dangers of a submarine warfare was 
not Mr. Wells, as many people who insist on making a prophet 
of the great English novelist are stating, but Dr. A. Conan 
Doyle, whose articles, which I read in Collier's Weekly a little 
while before the war was declared, created a deep impression 
on me. That the war will end in a draw is the opinion of many 
clear-minded and foresighted students of human occurrences. 

In my humble capacity, delivering in October, 1890, a po- 
litical speech to a constituency assembled in the Tempio di 
Serapide at Pozzuoli, Naples, I foresaw the terrible conflagra- 
tion. At the hospitable house of a Pozzuoli antiquarian and 
archeologist — Abbate Criscio, a Catholic priest — I was arguing 
about the future of wars and mankind with the German his- 
torian, Theodore Mommsen. Both Professor Mommsen and 
Reverend Criscio were amused at my observations that a 
great, appalling war would fatally come, which would inexor- 
ably make a far country — the United States of America — the 
guardian of democracy and civilization. Some time later. 
Professor Mommsen, speaking of me with Reverend Criscio, 
called me in a jocular way "the American prophet ;" and the 
man who gave me the information was Signor Pollio, a Poz- 
zuoli gentleman of high standing, whose sons had been my 
college chums, and who was the owner of a magnificent bed of 
Fusaro oysters — the most delicious in the world — and of lands 
very rich in Roman antiquities. When the observation was 
made, I was far away, in Russia. In spite of the suspicion 
that an immense European conflagration, which has become 
the world's war, would end in a draw, I kept inciting the Ital- 
ians against the Austrians all my life. National aspirations, 
family blood spilt for the cause, Austrian and German op- 
pression of centuries, Garibaldian aflfiliations, knowledge of 
history, made of me one of the most ardent missionaries of 
Irredentism. And my sincere Americanism strengthens my 
conviction that the worst blunder of President Wilson would 
be even a distant encouragement to leave Austria as she is. 
No status quo in a country which is not united by ties of na- 
tionality, mutual respect, love, common aspirations, spiritual 
unity. Austria is not a nation : she is a gilded shop of nation- 
alities, languages, tendencies, civilizations, opposite, conflict- 
ing, unmixable, which may perhaps become good neighbors, 
but can never dwell under the same roof. I dream a huge vic- 
tory. I wish it. I want it. But, so far as the United States 
is concerned, the ending of the war in a draw will be a ruin 
only in appearance. All European nations will find them- 
selves in such a state of poverty, abjection, collapse, that 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 79 

whether willing or not they have to come to their senses, and 
grant gladly what they were refusing in the madness of devas- 
tation and carnage. Germany has to restore Belgium, to give 
back Alsace-Lorraine to heroic France, to relinquish Poland, 
to say good-bye to imperial dreams. Serbia will be restored. 
Italy will have Trento, Trieste, Pola, Fiume, and rule supreme 
in the Adriatic. Bulgaria will cease to be a nation of vultures. 
Austria and Turkey shall disappear from the geographic map. 
The Balkans shall be readjusted in conformity with justice, and 
not to suit selfish Britain or infamous Germany. 

We all hope and wish that the termination of the war will 
be determined by a decisive victory of the allies ; and no effort 
should be spared to reach such a glorious end. Our magnifi- 
cent national administration will add new achievements to the 
wonders already accomplished. But a decisive victory over 
the Central Empires can be anticipated and expected only if 
the allies will once and forever understand the necessity of 
unity of purpose and of command. All fronts should obey the 
orders of one master mind. Italy was the key to a final, decis- 
ive, crushing, obstreperous victory. Napoleon knew his busi- 
ness more than all of his modern imitators combined. And he 
admonished that Berlin should be reached through Vienna. Ca- 
dorna was accomplishing wonders. The unexpected happened 
not only through treason, and Bolsheviki, pacifist, and religious 
propaganda, but principally through want of war material, 
and through lack of understanding and cooperation of the 
allies. I have been tempted to use the word "jealousy." With 
the unity of command the disaster would have been impossible. 
Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia was the best allied general, 
with Foch of France a close second. Now that through the 
Russian revolt and mess Nicholas has been eliminated forever, 
would the allies come to their senses, the supreme command 
should be given to General Ferdinand Foch, whom Marshal 
Joffre rightly called the greatest strategist in Europe. 

But be as it may, the United States of America will be 
anyhow the moral and material winner of the conflict. Should 
the war end in a draw, America would become the dominant 
factor, politic and economic, in the world, as sure as day will 
follow night. We are far from the theatre of the frightful 
conflict, where thousands of volcanoes seem to spread ruin and 
death all around. Our territory will be spared. Our indus- 
trial and agricultural activities will continue, and need will 
improve them wonderfully. The merchant marine, which is 
one of the most impellent needs of this country, will have be- 
come a reality, a national pride, a source of blessing to Amer- 
ica. Our increased and improved productiveness will supply 
our wants and help other countries. I say help other coun- 
tries, and not conquer other markets, because our mission 
will not be that of commercial expansion, but of bringing to 
every country in the world the blessings of democracy. 



80 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

The greatest ascendancy of the United States of America 
in the affairs of the world should not be mercenary. We have 
everything we need. We must not be anxious for wealth ; first, 
because we have everything we want; second, because happi- 
ness and glory do not come from mountains of gold, but from 
broadness of mind and stoutness of heart. Monarchies and 
empires are despicable. But a republic of merchants, who 
think only of wealth and power, will be as unjust, tyrannical, 
and undemocratic as the Republic of San Marco (Venice), 
which was the worst negation of justice and freedom in the 
history of the Italians. 

But we must demand that the peace of the world be for- 
ever assured, recognizing the principle of nationality, which 
is one of the first fundamentals of civilization, eliminating 
obsolete forms of government, which, depending on large 
armies and navies, will be the impending sword of Damocles 
on peaceful countries, securing the blessings of democracy to 
all nations. Even a democratic republic would be a blessing 
to England — the England of the people and not of the lords — 
no matter what the laudatores temporis acti will say. If the 
monarchies of England, Italy, Belgium, and Spain are prac- 
tically free democracies, and if the republic of Venice was a 
kind of aristocratic oligarchy, where the will of the people was 
absolutely unknown, the fact remains that kings if decorative 
are a useless and very expensive luxury, and if invested with 
power they are a constant menace. The House of Lords in 
England and the Senate in Italy are a prerogative and a de- 
fense of the crown, an institution, in other words, radically op- 
posed to every principle of democracy. When the king is com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy, has the power to de- 
clare war and to conclude treaties, can dissolve parliament, if 
the laws enacted displease him, when his person is sacred and 
inviolable, who is the fool who has the nerve to make a com- 
parison between republics and monarchies, and declare em- 
phatically that the only difference is in the name? We call 
real republics only those democracies which are masters of 
their destinies, and make and unmake their own governments, 
from president down. It is true that we, citizens of the United 
States,' have too much respect for the will and freedom of 
other peoples, and we have no desire to dictate to them what 
kind of government they should have. But as missionaries 
of real democracy, we have a right to express our wishes and 
our views. 

Washington has to become the New Rome, not the New 
Rome dreamt by the two German gentlemen I have awakened 
from the long silence of the grave, but the real holy city, gov- 
erned by the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. 

With the teachings of Thomas Jefferson and with Pro- 
gress and Pover'ty of Henry George, we can correct our politi- 
cal and economical mistakes. In order to teach freedom to 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 81 

other people, we should free ourselves. Duties of Men, by 
Giuseppe Mazzini, should be the civil catechism of the genera- 
tions. Rome of old, situated in the center of the world of yore, 
was its natural head. Roma, Caput Mundi. She converted 
the world into a huge suburb of the metropolis, centralizing, 
controlling, keeping in absolute subjection to the national sys- 
tem. She had no heart, no human sympathy, no mercy to the 
servants, the enemies, the rebels; and governed only with 
head and arm, the law and the legions. Noblemen and ple- 
bians, masters and slaves, Romans and Barbarians. Art, lit- 
erature, and science, were in their beginning, and remained 
for a very long time the occupations of the low, the oppressed, 
the slave ; and even later on, when Rome became the center of 
culture and refinement, her really great, with very few excep- 
tions, were not properly Romans, but people from, the pro- 
vinces: Horace from Venosa, Virgil from Mantua, Ovid from 
Sulmo, Sallust from Amiternum, Cicero from Arpinum, Livy 
from Patavium, Tacitus. The founders of Latin Literature 
had been slaves and "liberti" — Andronicus, Ennius, Plautus, 
Terence, Naevius. In years gone by, Rome had been a great 
and austere nation, powerful, feared, wonderfully expanding; 
but she despised as unworthy of a virile race what she consid- 
ered the corrupting influence of arts and letters. But after 
she conquered Greece, the slaves made captive their masters 
through their letters and vices. Horace rightly observed in 
his A7's Poetica: "Captive Greece took captive her rude con- 
queror." Decadence in literature always is a twin sister of 
effeminacy. Great natural vigor and strength of character 
modified by the influences just named produced monstrosities 
like Catilina and Julius Caesar, both Romans from Rome, both 
patricians, both in different ways a strange mixture of altru- 
ism and selfishness, generosity and cruelty. Roman vigor had 
been emasculated by Greek perversion. When genius and folly 
appear in the same individual, be positive that something is 
wrong somewhere; generally the one who makes victims has 
been a victim before. If you allow your daughters and sons 
to go and drink and dance with everybody in cabarets, you 
have no right to complain of the inevitable harvesting ! 

The Roman — the typical Roman genius — in the intellec- 
tual history of the capital of the world of yore is Lucretius. 
De Rerum Natm^a is the masterpiece of an age. 

If not corrupted by Greek decadence, Rome would have 
had masterpieces galore, with the national trade-mark; and 
we would not be compelled to shudder only at the idea that our 
children might read the shocking obscenities of Ovid, garbed 
in verses of rapturing beauty. Admirable is certainly Virgil ; 
but we cannot separate him from Homer; while Dante, who 
calls Virgil "his master and his author," is always Dante, per- 
haps the greatest poet and artist of all ages, as Thomas Carlyle 
practically declares in his lectures on Hero Worship. For Ugo 



82 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

Foscolo the three masters of all divine geniuses were Homer, 
Dante, and Shakespeare. Amen. 

The New Rome, Washington, situated in the center of the 
modern world, must be its natural heart. Washington, Cor 
Mundi. 

The idea of conquest is extraneous to our conception of 
greatness, and socialism, as preached by the followers of 
Marx, is not a product of the American soil. We advocate 
human brotherhood, without communism ; true altruism, with- 
out suppressing the greatest incentive of progress and happi- 
ness — well-directed individualism. We want everybody at 
his place, in order to work effectively and efficiently for the 
common good, for the advance of the race and of humanity. 
A man, no matter how clever and great, cannot accomplish 
everything. Mazzini was a great thinker, the greatest of all 
philosophers of freedom, the educator and apostle of an age of 
giants. But he was absolutely unfit to have a position which re- 
quired executive ability. He ruined the Roman Republic, he 
made a mess of many of the revolts which preceded the unifi- 
cation of Italy. And the resentment of Garibaldi was more than 
justified. Who can read the famous letter of Garibaldi, without 
going with the mind to the miserable conditions created in 
Russia by theorists lacking executive ability? Disgusted with 
the uncertainties of Mazzini and the other triumvirs, on June 
2nd, 1849, the great liberator wrote to the great master of lib- 
erty: 

"Mazzini : Here I cannot avail anything for the 
good of the Republic, save in two ways: as a dicta- 
tor with unlimited plenary powers, or as a simple 
soldier. Choose! — Giuseppe Garibaldi." 

I have related the incident, in order to show that to criti- 
cise inefficient officials in Washington does not mean to be 
poor patriots. Nobody loves Mazzini more than I do ; but I do 
not believe I am guilty of any lack of respect to his memory, if 
I state that he had no executive ability. I have, in order to 
avoid misunderstandings, taken examples from Italy, picking 
up exactly the men whose memories I worship most. 

It is absolutely necessary to avoid and eliminate all 
strange dualisms of good and evil. If we have to offer the 
world, with much good, some evil, it is better to give up the 
task. America cannot be but good. Like many of the ancient 
— all religions show the same dualism — the old Russians had 
two gods — Belibodg, the genius of good; and Tschernobog, 
the genius of evil : they were worshiping the former for grat- 
itude, and the later for fear. If our country has to be a god- 
dess for all nations on earth, she must be worshiped for grati- 
tude, and not for fear. We can have in this country but one 
great mission — that of spreading all over the world private, 
social, and political virtue. 



Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 83 

More fortunate than any other people, ancient or mod- 
ern, also in this respect we had, combined in the same man, 
the theoretical and executive ability. Abraham Lincoln, who 
was our immortal teacher of freedom, was also the greatest 
President this country ever had; or, if you please, the most 
wonderful chief executive in the history of the world. The 
ancients would have made a god of him. Great was George 
Washington, but his greatness is essentially American. 

That erratic rag peddler of swill barrel erudition and 
gossip unworthy even of the Merry Wives of Windsor, Pro- 
fessor Beard, in order to appear a man of great ability, tried 
to belittle Washington and the other immortal fathers of the 
country, picking up the piquant traits of human weakness. 
The greater the man, the more human he is. The weakness 
of our clay, contrasting stupendously with the marvels of 
the spirit, gives a more bold and impressive projection to 
genius. Bacon enunciated the greatest of all philosophical 
truths, when he sentenced: Homo sum; humani nihil a me 
alienum puto — I am a man, nothing of what is human do I 
count foreign to myself. Even Jesus was tempted by Satan. 
Hypocrisy and greatness cannot blend. A great man without 
faults, big or small, is an absurdity, a conventional lie, a mon- 
strosity. Jesus spoke to mankind in the incident of the adul- 
teress. Abraham Lincoln spoke to mankind when he answered 
his "holier than thou" adviser : "I am sorry I don't know what 
brand of whiskey General Grant drinks, or I would send him 
a barrel." If George Washington belongs to America, Abra- 
ham Lincoln belongs to mankind. 

After Lincoln we had great Presidents. Who can ever 
forget, if he is honest, the commanding figure of Grover Cleve- 
land? He was a giant, surrounded by pygmies, who wanted 
to reduce him to their size, or by political opponents blinded 
by passion. President Roosevelt astonished the world with 
his ability, foresight, culture, directness, and character. His 
faults, big as they may seem,, give wonderful relief to the im- 
mensity of his figure. Even as a private citizen, in spite and 
because of his outbursts, he is an extraordinarily inspiring 
influence to our country and to the civilized world. And now 
that political passion is not blinding us any more, we have to 
admit that President Taft was as peaceful and lofty as head 
of this country as peaceful and lofty he is as a private citizen. 
President Wilson is to-day the greatest leader in the Arma- 
geddon for democracy and justice. May the Lord keep him 
and bless him. I wrote against him, when I judged him from 
his history of the American people. I have nothing but ad- 
miration for him, now that his work as a statesman makes of 
him the most commanding public figure in the world. May 
the Lord convince the Americans, whose prejudice against a 
third term is founded on sentiment rather than reason, of the 
•wiseness and of the necessity of making Mr. Wilson President 



84 Gigliotti — Cor Mundi 

for the third time. If the war is not at an end by 1920, the 
country needs absolutely his services; and if peace has 
been restored, he is the man who can, on account of the ex- 
perience and the knowledge of the last trying years, success- 
fully face the arduous task of readjustment and reconstruc- 
tion. Had Lincoln not been assassinated by Booth, the country 
should have forced a third term on him. He could have done 
in two years what his successors were unable to do in a quar- 
ter of a century. The elevation of Johnson to the presidency 
was a public calamity. This is the verdict of history, and his- 
tory has not been shaped by any of us, author or readers. I 
hasten to the conclusion. Foreign settlements must be wiped 
off from big and small cities. Unless you cut the abominable 
tree of disloyalty, treachery and corruption, and dig up the 
roots, and burn them, scattering the ashes to the winds, the 
same deleterious influences, which came from Greece and 
ruined Rome, will disrupt inexorably this land of promise. 
The deleterious work had started already. The world's war 
came in time to take us from the brink of the abyss, and re- 
store to us the virtues, the ideals, and the faith of the founders 
of this great Republic. 

In order to become worthy citizens of the New Rome, 
"we must (these are the words of Abraham Lincoln) lay aside 
any prejudices and march, shoulder to shoulder, in the great 
army of Freedom. We must make of this a land of liberty in 
fact, as it is in name." 

May official Washington hear and accept the warning 
and the pleading of this Vox clamantis in deserto, of this hum- 
ble citizen who loves this country more than anything on earth 
— more than his own life. 

God bless our country! God bless our soldiers, making 
of them, more than unconquerable fighters and heroes, the 
noble champions of justice, democracy, and love. 

Providence has made of Washington the heart of the 
world. 

WASHINGTON, COR MUNDI. 
The End. 



ERRATA 



On page i^, tenth line of third paragraph should read "stiletto." 

On page 68, closing line of second paragraph should read "Joan 
of Arc." 



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